Masaniello: The Life and Afterlife of a Neapolitan Revolutionary 9789048553334

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Masaniello

Renaissance History, Art and Culture This series investigates the Renaissance as a complex intersection of political and cultural processes that radiated across Italian territories into wider worlds of influence, not only through Western Europe, but into the Middle East, parts of Asia and the Indian subcontinent. It will be alive to the best writing of a transnational and comparative nature and will cross canonical chronological divides of the Central Middle Ages, the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period. Renaissance History, Art and Culture intends to spark new ideas and encourage debate on the meanings, extent and influence of the Renaissance within the broader European world. It encourages engagement by scholars across disciplines – history, literature, art history, musicology, and possibly the social sciences – and focuses on ideas and collective mentalities as social, political, and cultural movements that shaped a changing world from ca 1250 to 1650. Series editors Christopher Celenza, Georgetown University, USA Samuel Cohn, Jr., University of Glasgow, UK Andrea Gamberini, University of Milan, Italy Geraldine Johnson, Christ Church, Oxford, UK Isabella Lazzarini, University of Molise, Italy

Masaniello The Life and Afterlife of a Neapolitan Revolutionary

Silvana D’Alessio Translated by Thomas V. Cohen

Amsterdam University Press

The publication of this book is made possible by a grant from University of Salerno.

Originally published as Masaniello. La sua vita e il mito in Europa. © 2007 Salerno Editrice S.r.l., Roma Translated by Thomas V. Cohen Cover illustration: Onofrio Palumbo, ‘Masaniello’. Private collection ‘Martino Oberto’. By courtesy of Margherita Levoni. Photo by Flavio Parodi Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden Lay-out: Crius Group, Hulshout isbn 978 94 6372 145 5 e-isbn 978 90 4855 333 4 doi 10.5117/9789463721455 nur 685 © Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2022 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book.

A mio fratello Tommaso, in memoria



Table of Contents

Introduction to the Present Edition

11

Premise 29

Part I  The Life I.

Naples in the Time of Masaniello 39 1. Conditions of the City and the Kingdom 39 2. An Odious Gabella 44

II.

A Job for Masaniello The Revolt Begins

1. 2. 3. 4.

55

The Fire at the House of the Gabella della frutta 55 Black Bread 64 Abolish the Gabelle 67 At the Prisons 69

III. Portrait 1. “As Spirited and Vivacious as a Person Could Be” 2. The Mother Sold “Toccati”… 3. Misfortunes and Pastimes 4. “All Riled Up”

73 73 77 81 84

IV.

The First “Successes” 1. A New Scenario 2. To Arms 3. The Fires

87 87 90 96

V.

Among the Great 103 1 Letting it Happen 103 2. “Capitan Generale” 109

VI.

A Plot and the Death of Peppe Carafa 1. Project 2. “And I am Aniello the Butcher” 3. Absolute Power

113 113 120 124

VII.

4. Off with the Cloaks and Other Orders 5. The Angel and the Devil

126 127

The Visit to the Palace

131

Thursday (Day 11)

1. The Food Supply 131 2. With the Dottori 135 3. The Ceremony in the Church and the Cavalcade 136 VIII.

IX.

X.

A Day of “Justice”

147

1.

147

Friday (Day 12)

The Plebeians Seen Up Close

The Oath of the Duke of Arcos

157

1.

157

Saturday (Day 13)

I am Nothing

The Excursion to Posillipo 1. Giraffi’s Lies

167 167

XI. Epilogue 179 1. The Death of Marco Vitale and Masaniello’s Attempted Flight 179 2. His Final Salute 186 3. “‘Make way, make way, for the Signora Duchess of the Sardines!’” 192 4. Letters: Thanks to God… 196 5. The Bite of the Tarantula 197 XII.

The Funeral

203

XIII.

The Judgments of Those Who Knew the Most

217

Part II  A Brief History of a Myth XIV.

A Voice During the Revolt 1. The First Phase 2. The Double Game of the Duke of Guise 3. Woe betide the Vanquished

225 225 230 233

XV.

4. Meanwhile, at Venice 5. The Plague and the Anti-Christ

237 238

European Stage Plays 1. In England 2. In the American Colonies 3. The United Provinces 4. In Germany

241 241 245 246 249

XVI. The Eighteenth Century: People and Plebeians 253 1. It Is Not a Miracle… 253 2. A Hero Sui Generis 255 3. Modène’s beneficent influence 257 4. In France 261 5. For the Parthenopean Republic 264 XVII. An Italian Hero during the Risorgimento 269 1. General Considerations 269 2. Against the Foreigners 270 3. La Muette de Portici 272 4. In Naples 274 5. A Daring Biography: Alexandre Dumas 276 6. For the Unity of Italy 278 7. The First Romantic Plays 280 8. 1848 282 9. Masaniello from the Opposing Side 284 10. The Masaniello of the Democrats 290 11. Garibaldi at the Opera Masaniello 300 12. Between Naples and Italy: A difficult Mediation 306 13. In Honour of the Illustrious Patriot 309 14. On the Trail of the True Masaniello 311 XVIII. Part of Naples 1 The Plebs of Masaniello 2. The Refusal of Tragedy 3. Masaniello-Pulcinella

313 313 324 326

Selected bibliography

339

Index 371



Introduction to the Present Edition

In June 1647, before the so-called Masaniello revolt broke out, an unnamed author wrote that a placard (cartello) had surfaced, issuing threats against the city’s nobles and the “mayors” (sindaci). According to the author, should new gabelle (taxes) be brought in, these persons would be “dragged” across the entire city. On the other hand, he rather doubted that such an uprising would occur, “if there is nobody to take charge and stir it up, there is no need to fear the outcome, because the People are too abased.”1 He was unaware that a young man of the Lavinaio quarter had already opted to risk his life for the cause. On July 7 1647, Tommaso Aniello d’Amalfi led hundreds of youths to the viceregal palace to compel the viceroy to abolish the gabella on fruit, and all other state charges on comestibles. For several days, especially after an attack that aimed to kill him, Masaniello became a sort of viceroy or king of the peninsula’s most populous city, one of Europe’s biggest.2 The chronicler Alessandro Giraffi explains the many means by which Masaniello pushed the people towards revolt: incouraged the bold, promis’d rewards, threatned the suspected, reproach’d the coward, applauded the valiant, and marvellously incited the minds of men, by many degrees his superiors, to battell, to burnings, to plunder, to spoile, to blood and to death.3

It was thus thanks to Masaniello that on the second day of the uprising, the people could count on some 150,000 men in arms.4 Masaniello was killed on 16 July, but officially the revolt lasted until 6 April 1648, when the new 1 Paris, BNF, Fond Dupuy 674, “Napoli 18 giugno,” ff. 28r–29r: 28v. 2 Alessandro Giraffi speaks of 600,000 souls: Giraffi, Le rivolutioni di Napoli (Venice: per il Baba, 1647), pp. 106–107; on this author, see f. 58; Tommaso Astarita, “Naples is the Whole World,” in A Companion to Early Modern Naples, by Astarita (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 1–8. 3 Giraffi’s translation in English was published in 1650: James Howell, An exact historie of the late revolutions in Naples […] rendred to English, by J. H. Esqr (London: R. Lowndes at the White Lion, 1650), p. 104. 4 This number, 150,000, appears in the chronicle: I fatti di Masaniello in una cronaca lucchese (ms. posseduto dalla famiglia Pollera), Naples, ms. SNSP XXIII C 4, p. 3; Aurelio Musi, La rivolta

D’Alessio, S. Masaniello. The Life and Afterlife of a Neapolitan Revolutionary Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2022 doi: 10.5117/9789463721455_intro

12 Masaniello

viceroy made his entrance into the city.5 News of the uprising soon spread beyond the borders of the Kingdom of Naples: the revolt was yet one more ulcer on the great, afflicted body of the Spanish monarchy in the last spasms of its exhausting war against the United Provinces (1568–1648), after the Catalan revolt of May 1640, the Portuguese secession (1640–1641), and the Sicilian revolts (1646–1647).6 The Kingdom of Naples was the most important source of financial contributions for the Spanish monarchy among its Italian domains: since 1619 (the beginning of the Thirty Years’ War), Spain’s demand for money had grown; confronted with revolts in Catalonia and Portugal, and the war with France, Philip IV was constrained to ask for new contributions. These needs would require some radical changes in the institutions and social life of the Kingdom of Naples, the complete subordination of the role of the Eletto del Popolo to the viceroy, the increase in financial pressure, the growth of a new elite – often parvenus who invested in gabelle – and the sale of important positions in the local tribunals.7 On all this, our sources

di Masaniello nella scena politica barocca, preface by Giuseppe Galasso (Naples: Guida editori, 1989), on the crucial role of Masaniello. 5 Musi, La rivolta di Masaniello, pp. 265–266; on the night between 5 and 6 April 1648, the count of Oñate (Iñigo Vélez de Guevara) entered Naples as the new viceroy. He was there until 1653; on this period, see Anna Minguito Palomares, Nápoles y el virrey conde de Oñate. La estrategia del poder y el resurgir del reino (1648–1653) (Madrid: Silex), 2011, pp. 139 ff.; on his repression directed against the Masanielli and Barberini, see Alain Hugon, Naples insurgée (1647–1648). De l’événement à la mémoire 1647–1648 (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2011), pp. 243 ff.; Giovanni Muto, “1649. Napoli tra repressione e rilegittimazione” in Biagio Salvemini and Angelantonio Spagnoletti, edited by, Territori, poteri, rappresentazioni nell’Italia di età moderna (Santo Spirito -Bari: Edipuglia, 2012), pp. 127–139. 6 See the remarks of John Elliott on the parallels with these other revolts, or some of them, among which the reaction to outsiders and the determination to fight for the fatherland; idem, “Revolution and Continuity in Early Modern Europe,” Past & Present, n. 42 (Feb., 1969): 35–56; Rosario Villari, Elogio della dissimulazione. La lotta politica nel Seicento (Bari: Laterza, 1987), pp. 49–78; Francesco Benigno, “Ripensare le «sei rivoluzioni contemporanee». Considerazioni sul conflitto politico nel Seicento,” Nuova Rivista storica, XCVI, 3 (2012): 783–816; for a comparative perspective, see Geoffrey Parker, Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013); Joana Fraga-Joan-Lluís Palos, “Trois révoltes en images. La Catalogne, le Portugal et Naples dans les années 1640,” in Soulèvements, révoltes, révolutions dans l’empire des Habsbourgs d’Espagne, XVIe–XVIIe siècles, edited by Alain Hugon and Alexandre Merle (Madrid: Casa de Velásquez, 2016), pp. 119–138; Alexandra Merle, Stéphane Jettot and Manuel Herrero Sánchez (eds.), La Mémoire des révoltes en Europe à l’époque moderne (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2018). 7 Rosario Villari, The Revolt of Naples, translated by James Newill with the assistance of John Marino (London: Polity Press, 1993); Villari, Un sogno di libertà. Napoli nel declino di un impero 1585–1648 (Milan: Mondadori, 2012); Parker, Global Crisis, p. 422: “the viceroys also alienated crown lands and rights (although this reduced revenue), sold public offices (although this undermined

Introduc tion to the Present Edition

13

provide rich details, helping us to reconstruct the city’s daily life, in which the revolt took shape. Masaniello’s uprising was only the first phase of the Neapolitan revolt, which began with several demands. Initially, there had been six: respect for the city’s “privilege” of Charles V; the abolition of the gabelle and fiscal dues first imposed by Charles V; a general pardon for crimes against the regime; parity in voting rights between the people and the nobles and the direct election of the Eletto del Popolo, who had become a mere instrument in the viceroy’s hands; the inscription of the state’s concessions on a “column to be placed in the Mercato square,” and, should new gabelle be introduced, the people would be allowed to take up arms “without incurring the crime of lese-majesty or any penalty at all.”8 Boxed in by the uprising, the viceroy immediately conceded everything. He then wrote to King Philip IV for help, asking him to dispatch the fleet, which later bombarded the city for several days, from 5 October.9 On 17 October, Naples declared independence from Spain with a printed Manifesto, which also appeared at the end of Giraffi’s chronicle. The city then requested support from any power inclined to take the field but on 14 November a French noble, Henri duke of Guise arrived; he had neither the means to succour Naples nor the will to uphold its newborn republic. On 21 February 1648, two of the most important anti-Spanish voices were silenced: the poet Antonio Basso and Salvatore de Gennaro, tagged by an anonymous writer as authors of the October Manifesto.10

the loyalty and integrity of the civil service and issued bonds (although the interest payable greatly increased expenditure).” 8 Paris, BNF, Dupuy, 674, f. 31r: Capitoli dimandati dal popolo concessi dal V. Ré. 9 “Nel tardo pomeriggio del 5 ottobre 4000 soldati mossero da Castelnuovo e dall’arsenale per disarmare il popolo”; “tremila pezzi di artiglieria spararono ininterrottamente per nove giorni […]”: Rosario Villari, Per il re o per la patria. La fedeltà nel Seicento (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 1994), pp. 67–72. On how the war evolved, see Villari, Per il re o per la patria, p. 18 ff.; Vittor Ivo Comparato, “From the Crisis of Civil Culture to the Neapolitan Republic of 1647: Republicanism in Italy between the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” in Constitutionalism in Early Modern Europe, vol. I, Republicanism and Constitutionalism in Early Modern Europe, edited by Martin van Gelderen and Quentin Skinner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp.169–194; Silvana D’Alessio, Contagi. La rivolta napoletana del 1647–48. Linguaggio e potere politico (Florence: CET, 2003). 10 Notice of the disappearance of Basso and de Gennaro surfaces in a rich, untitled, anonymous account: in Rome, Biblioteca Casanatense, ms. 4258 (henceforth Anonimo Casanatense, Narrazione della rivolta), f. 225r: after transcribing the Manifesto del fedelissimo popolo, the anonymous writer notes the authors’ names in the margin: “questo manifesto lo ha fatto il detto Salvatore de Gennaro e Antonio Basso.”

14 Masaniello

Internal divisions, a lack of resources and food, and military defeats brought the revolt to an end. Once it was over, a series of (now generally forgotten) death sentences followed.11 Many European cities were flooded with letters, reports, chronicles, and other papers about the events in Naples. In this way, the Masaniello episode was reported and used for a variety of local ends. There were many reasons for this: firstly, on account of the great power Masaniello had enjoyed, and his meteoric rise from revolt leader to king, and, subsequently, to saint; and secondly, because, according to some chroniclers, the next Capopopolo, Gennaro Annese, lacked the flexibility and sparkle of young Masaniello. But there were also cultural and political reasons; the account that circulated most widely throughout Europe was Giraffi’s, but this stopped with Masaniello’s death. For many authors, across the centuries, Giraffi’s account, translated into English, Dutch, and German, was the reference text, so much so that we can speak of an enduring “Giraffi effect.”12 His “instant book” presents a convincing story: the revolt had to happen, but Masaniello, who launched his career justly and judiciously, soon became mad and tyrannical, due to natural causes, and under the pressure of events. Giraffi explained that, like high-flown Icarus, rising too far, he soon came crashing down. Across several centuries, Masaniello has had enthusiastic and sincere admirers, guided in their opinions by Machiavelli, the people’s great defender, or by more recent maitres à penser, like Mazzini, inspirer of many nineteenthcentury writers. The abbot Carlo Denina, for example, compared Masaniello to the Florentine Ciompi-rebel leader, Michele di Lando, whom Machiavelli had lauded in his Istorie fiorentine (III, 17). Di Lando, a wool worker, “showed himself to have an intelligence not inferior to any of the major men that had never had part in that government.” Masaniello was: that man of singular and incomprehensible genius, Tommaso Aniello, popularly called Masaniello, who, from the humble craft of fishmonger (or seller of fish-wrap, if that is what he was), without the least instruction 11 In spite of the indult’s promise of pardon, many were put to death for a variety of motives, including having attempted a new uprising; among others, men close to Masaniello were executed, including his cognato (brother-in-law), Damiano Gargano, a shopkeeper. For the executed men, see Antonella Orefice, I giustiziati di Napoli dal 1556 al 1862, with a preface by Antonio Illibato (Nuovo Monitore Napoletano, digital edition, 2017). 12 I have drawn my expression, “Giraffi effect,” from one of the most stimulating books from my studies of literature and history: Effetto Sterne. La narrazione umoristica in Italia da Foscolo a Pirandello, edited by Giancarlo Mazzacurati (Pisa: Nistri Lischi, 1990).

Introduc tion to the Present Edition

15

in letters, without practice in either court nor army, knew how to dress so well, and to bear the character of a general, of a prince, and father of the fatherland, that was surely a miraculous thing.13

Denina is silent about Masaniello’s decline and end. Other writers, in the nineteenth-century, corrected Giraffi’s version to write a more moral story, where the madness was not natural, but provoked by the Spanish viceroy, with a drink designed to drive the man off his head. One such writer was Irish Lady Morgan, who thought it possible that Masaniello had ingested a “poisonous drug.”14 Thus, many wrote that the famous Capopopolo had been poisoned. Thanks to this adaptation, the story gained allure; its hero became an example of the cruelty of the viceroy and his ministers, and nineteenth-century readers were quick to draw parallel with the current Bourbon kings. Masaniello’s fame is best explained with an eye to many texts, in a variety of languages, written about the first days of the revolt, in a continual rewriting of the seventeenth-century sources, or a re-elaboration of fragments holding elements of truth. Sam Cohn recently wrote of the “famous” Neapolitan Capopopolo, in an essay on popular resistance, in which he lists many leaders who arose from among the commoners, both medieval and early modern.15 There we meet first the medieval names of Jan Breyde, and the weaver Pieter de Coninck, who fought to lift off the French yoke in the second Flemish revolt of 1323–1328: […] leaders such as Clais Zannekin, Zeger Janszone, and Jacob Peyt came from the peasantry. In 1368 the weaver Hans Weiss led a revolt that brought craft guilds to power in Augsburg. But others have been less known such as the Genoese galley-man Piero Capurro, who in 1329 organized a mutiny 13 Carlo Denina, Delle rivoluzioni d’Italia libri ventiquattro, vol. IV (Venice: Giovanni Gatti, 1779), XXIII, ch. VII, p. 253. In 1378–82, the Ciompi of Florence wanted higher pay and the right to form a guild. Denina, born at Revello, near Cuneo, knew the Frenchmen of the Enlightenment (albeit he quarrelled with Voltaire over religion). See his entry in the Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (henceforth DBI), by Guido Fagioli Vercellone, vol. 38 (1990). 14 Lady Morgan, The Life and Times of Salvator Rosa (Paris: A. Belin, 1824), p. 283; the remarks of Lady Morgan were later picked up by other authors, backing a Risorgimento based on the people’s efforts. For this Mazzinian goal, see Gian Luca Fruci and Alessio Petrizzo, “Risorgimento di massa (1846–1849),” in Nel nome della nazione. Il Risorgimento nelle testimonianze, nei documenti e nelle immagini (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2010), p. 150. 15 Samuel K. Cohn Jr, “Authority and Popular Resistance,” in The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern European History, 1350–1750, vol. II, Cultures and Power, edited by Hamish Scott (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 418–439.

16 Masaniello

against the aristocratic commander, Aiton Doria, because of his failure to pay back wages.

Cohn then looks to the early modern: After the fifteenth century, leaders of popular revolt from the ranks of peasants and artisans had certainly not disappeared, as with ‘Captain Cobbler’ and ‘Captain Poverty’, who were leaders of the Pilgrimage of Grace revolt in England in 1536; George Brunner of ‘humble origins’, who led a peasant uprising in Austria in 1597; ‘Captain Pouch’ who led the Midland Rising of 1607; and perhaps most famously, the charismatic, crazed fishmonger, Masaniello, who led (at least in the streets) the Neapolitan revolt of 1647 against Spanish Habsburg rule.16

Masaniello is probably of these the most famous because many letters, chronicles and other genres of texts were written about him, a man come from below who was able to punish those who had introduced further taxes on foodstuffs or tormented the helpless lower classes. The painter and poet Salvator Rosa wrote a poem for him, telling how he had smashed to death a “hydra of evils.”17 My book on Masaniello was published in 2007, on the invitation of Giuseppe Galasso; it was conceived as a biography-mythography of Masaniello, on whom we had very few entirely historical essays. The early-1980s debate between Peter Burke and Rosario Villari testified to the interest of the revolt’s first days,18 but subsequent writings surveyed the entire event, giving those 16 On this point, Parker wrote: “Although his reign lasted only nine days, the humble fisherman achieved an iconic status that anticipated that of Che Guevara in the twentieth century: artists captured his likeness in paintings, medals and wax statuettes”: Global Crisis, p. 527. There was an earlier rebel of the same name, Tommaso Aniello, from Sorrento; he fought against the imposition of a Spanish-style Inquisition in May of 1547. The revolt, which also had noble support, did succeed: Giraffi, Le rivolutioni, p. 12; Renata Pilati, Arcana seditionis. Violenze politiche e ragioni civili. Napoli 1547–1557 (Naples: Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici, 2014), p. 141. 17 Salvator Rosa, Poesie, lettere edite e inedite, edited by Giovanni Alfredo Cesareo (Naples: Tipografia della Regia Università, 1892), p. 54; the poet’s praise evokes the many-headed monster of Greek myth, a beast that, in conservative thought, characterized the plebs. See Christopher Hill’s classic essay, “The Many-Headed Monster in Late Tudor and Early Stuart Political Thinking,” in Charles H. Carter (ed.), From the Renaissance to the Counter-Reformation. Essays in Honor of Garrett Mattingly (New York: Random House, 1965), pp. 296–324. 18 Peter Burke, “The Virgin of the Carmine and the Revolt of Masaniello,” Past & Present, n. 99, (May 1983): 3–21; Villari, “Masaniello: Contemporary and Recent Interpretations,” Past & Present, n. 108 (Aug. 1985): 117–132; Burke, “Masaniello: A Response,” Past & Present, n. 114 (Feb.

Introduc tion to the Present Edition

17

initial days less than full attention. After a period of research,19 focusing especially on the manuscript chroniclers, it became clear that there was much material, in some cases previously unknown, that helped to answer some questions like: what was Masaniello’s role during the revolt? Did he really become ambitious and haughty? Was the poison rumour groundless? What impact did the death of Masaniello have on the revolt itself? Standing back from the story, it becomes clear that Masaniello was crucial not only because he was able to involve countless men and women, but also because he helped to keep the revolt – in the first days – within the limits of an uprising that didn’t question the Spanish sovereignty over the Kingdom of Naples. Reading the most detailed accounts, we understand that the young fisherman, had he followed his instincts, would swiftly have crossed the perilous red line between uprising and rebellion.20 For example, one anonymous author knew that, early on, Masaniello had ordered the capture of the great fortress above the town, Castel Sant’Elmo, but Cardinal Ascanio Filomarino (who was archbishop of the city) convinced him to renounce the enterprise.21 Thus, the castle, a looming symbol of Spanish power over Naples, remained in Spanish hands. Masaniello’s decision appeared in line with the objectives and the approach adopted during the revolt, but, in the long run, as conflict with the Spaniards arose, it turned out to have been 1987): 197–199; already published by then was Rosario Villari, La rivolta antispagnola a Napoli. Le origini, 1585–1647 (Bari: Laterza, 1967). In that volume, Villari likened the uprising to a peasant revolt. When the accord between the “feudality” and “royal power” broke down, he argued, a revolutionary movement arose. His reading is quite different in his Un sogno di libertà, pp. 118 ff. According to Elliott, what was novel in 1647–48 was the rapport between the rural and urban movements: Elliott, “Reform and Revolution in the Early Modern Mezzogiorno,” Past & Present, n. 224 (August 2014): 283–296; on Villari’s volume, see Studi storici: vol. 54, n. 2 (2013), with essays by John A. Marino, Giovanni Muto, and Anna Maria Rao, and vol. 61, no. 2 (2020) on Villari’s works more generally. 19 I took my first university degree with a thesis on the printed historiography of the Masaniello revolt, under the direction of Giorgio Fulco, author of many essays on baroque culture, to whom I am greatly indebted. 20 For the distinction between uprising and rebellion, see Angela de Benedictis, Tumulti. Moltitudini ribelli in età moderna (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2013). 21 Anonimo Casanatense, Narrazione della rivolta, f. 40r ff. Castel Sant’Elmo was built at the behest of Charles V, after his 1535 visit. It was the capital’s principal fortification: Carlos José Hernando Sánchez, “Una visita a castel Sant’Elmo. Famiglie, città e fortezze a Napoli tra Carlo V e Filippo II”, Annali di Storia moderna e contemporanea, 6 (2000): 39–89, at p. 58. To take royal castles signaled rebellion: Tutini and Verde write that Masaniello defended the choice to remain faithful to the king, against fellow Neapolitans antipathetic to all Spaniards. Racconto della sollevatione di Napoli accaduta nell’anno MDCXLVII, edited by Pietro Messina (Rome: Istituto storico italiano per l’età moderna e contemporanea, 1997), p. 56.

18 Masaniello

rather naïve and ill-fated.22 In other words, Masaniello shared with the legists who counseled him – Giulio Genoino, Cardinal Ascanio Filomarino, and others – the illusion that the viceroy would act in the people’s favour, and correct the abuses and skewed arrangements that had allowed the gabelle and exactions.23 The seventeenth-century sources revel Masaniello’s loyalty to what he called popolo mio (my people), his determination to die for the fatherland, and to see it freed of the gabelle that he himself had suffered under since he was a lad. We can discern there, too, his ability to convince even his more cultured audience with long speeches adorned with fragments from other discourses (evidence that he himself was a good listener). In other words, he knew well how to tune in with an interlocutor wiser than him and how to scant his secondary aims for his main goal: to free the city of the gabelle and to let the people enjoy the fruits that his fatherland offered so abundantly.24 22 After the first armed clashes between Neapolitans and Spaniards, the capitoli were rewritten and presented to the viceroy on 7 September; among other things, the people asked to take over Sant’Elmo (condition IX), but for obvious reasons the viceroy would not concede: Agostino Nicolai, Historia o vero Narrazione Giornale dell’Ultime Rivoluzioni della Città e Regno di Napoli, scritta e data in luce da Don A. N., consigliere di Stato del Ser.mo Sign.re Duca di Lorena, e suo Agente in Corte Cattolica (dedicata a don Giovanni d’Austria) (Amsterdam: Jodoco Pluymer, 1660), p. 187; on this and other chroniclers, see Elias de Tehada y Gabriella Percopo, Nápoles hispánico, tomo V, Las españas rotas, 1621–1665 (Sevilla: Ediciones Montejurra, 1964), p. 294; Giuseppe Galasso, Napoli spagnola dopo Masaniello (Florence: Sansoni, 1982), vol. II, pp. 94 ff.; Aurelio Musi, La rivolta del 1647–48, in Il Regno di Napoli nell’età di Filippo IV (Milan: Guerini e Associati, 2014). 23 A companion of Masaniello, Mercurio Cimmino, advised taking the castles: Tutini-Verde, Racconto della sollevatione, pp. 29, 60; Genoino’s voice, however, was louder against taking the Sant’Elmo. On the anti-Spanish Tutini, closer to the republicans Antonio Basso and Vincenzo d’Andrea, see among recent writings: Hugon, Naples insurgée, pp. 286 ff. (about Tutini and Fuidoro); Silvana D’Alessio: “Tutini, Camillo,” DBI, vol. 97 (2020); Laura Giuliano’s introduction in Tutini, De’ pittori, scultori, architetti, miniatori et ricamatori napolitani e regnicoli, edited by Giuliano, presentation by Francesco Caglioti (Matera: Edizioni Giannatelli, 2021). 24 The term patria was used by both Masaniello and the plebs; see e.g. Giraffi, Le rivolutioni, p. 20. There, Masaniello affirms that there is no more glorious and noble action than to honour the patria. Indeed, the plebs themselves used the term traditori della patria for those who invested their money to skim income from the gabelle (p. 70). For the term’s recurrence during the revolt in political writings, see Villari, Per il re o per la patria; Aurelio Musi, “‘Non pigra quies’. Il linguaggio politico degli Accademci Oziosi e la rivolta napoletana del 1647–48,” in ’Italia dei Viceré. Integrazione e resistenza nel sistema imperiale spagnolo (Salerno: Avagliano, 2000), pp. 129–147; there is a useful survey on Neapolitan literature from Pontano to the authors of the Manifesto in Giovanni Muto, “Fedeltà e patria nel lessico politico napoletano della prima età moderna,” in Storia sociale e politica. Omaggio a Rosario Villari, edited by Alberto Merola, Giovanni Muto, Elena Valeri, and Maria Antonietta Visceglia (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2007), pp. 495–522. If, indeed, the people stressed its own fidelity, it is very interesting that Masaniello himself had begun to speak of the necessity of defending the patria from tyrants.

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The contemporary sources, especially the handwritten ones, help revise the version of the facts imposed after Masaniello’s death, which held him largely responsible for his own demise. This version, propagated by Giraffi, has been repeated over and over by many historians, until not long ago. Giraffi writes: If Masaniello that Saturday on which a Te Deum was sung in the Cathedrall Church, had renounc’d all his usurp’d authority and power into the hands of the Viceroy, and return’d, as he sayed and sware he wold, to his former vocation of selling fish, he had deserv’d that the Neapolitan people should have erected him Colosso’s, and statues of gold, to the eternall memory of his magnanimous undertakings, brought to such a marvellous perfection: but a boundless ambition did cast such a mist before his eyes, that breaking the reines of reason, upon the Lords Day it self his brain began to turn, doing so many acts of foolishnesse and cruelty […].25

Thanks to another unprinted source, we know that, after the oath ceremony at the cathedral, Masaniello assumed the role of “war captain and general of all the army.”26 Surely, it would have worked out better, especially for him, if Masaniello had not accepted any role from the viceroy, but his “yes” on that occasion can be viewed from the perspective that many witness suggest to us. Once assigned by the viceroy the task of seeing the capitoli (terms of agreement) be respected, Masaniello’s advisers began to have somewhat more cordial relations with the palace. It is important to notice that Genoino was not elected President of the Camera della Sommaria (a financial organ) on the day of Masaniello’s funeral, as we read, but rather earlier, on 13 July, as documents in the State Archive in Naples clearly prove.27 That appointment, on that earlier date, signals an accord between Genoino and the viceroy, one that Masaniello almost surely knew about, and that boded ill for the revolt. Meanwhile, Genoino’s role of president was an honour that put him on weak footing with the viceroy. According to Marino Verdi and Camillo Tutini, observers at the time, this job would wear him down sorely, as it 25 Howell, An exact historie, p. 173; discussion of resigning appears in the work of Schipa: “Tanto il Genuino quanto il cardinale vollero e ottennero da Masaniello promessa e giuramento che, a fine pienamente raggiunto, egli avrebbe fatto a tutti deporre le armi e da parte sua rassegnato al comando”; Michelangelo Schipa, “La così detta rivoluzione di Masaniello. Parte prima. L’eroe popolare (1918),” in Idem, Studi masanielliani, edited by Giuseppe Galasso (Naples: Società napoletana di Storia Patria, 1997): p. 412. 26 Giuseppe Pollio, Historia del Regno di Napoli. Revolutione dell’Anno MDCXLVII insino al MDCXLIII scritta dal Reverendo D. G. P. Napoletano, Naples, BNN, X B 7, f. 38v. 27 Villari, Un sogno di libertà, p. 345. For the documents in the ASN, see Chapter VII in this book.

20 Masaniello

entailed a great mass of problems, involving twelve other presidents, one for each province of the kingdom; besides, his post would make many others jealous.28 With the advantage of hindsight, the two chroniclers were sure that the viceroy had come out ahead. Doubtless, the people’s faith in the viceroy and the breathing space he had won were precious for the Spanish front. Moreover, the strategic Sant’Elmo fortress remained in Spanish hands.29 This preface also allows me to make another point, in reply to a brief observation on a passage of my book made by Rosario Villari (an historian from whom all who study the revolt have learned hugely). In a footnote of his Un sogno di libertà, he wrote that it was unlikely that Masaniello, shortly before his death, had tried to flee to Ischia as I had written.30 It is not a central question, but, after rereading the two main sources on this, I am pleased to confirm that this is what they suggest. Returning to one of the two sources I cited, the chronicle by Tizio della Moneca, when the author reaches the sixteenth day of the revolt, he writes of an attempt by Masaniello to take refuge in Ischia’s great off-shore castle, held by the marquis d’Avalos, a noble officially faithful to the Spaniards, but thoroughly done with the viceroy’s rule, as later events would show.31 I quote here the passage from Della Moneca’s account: On Tuesday morning, the sixteenth of the present month, Masaniello gave orders that under pain of death no person dare approach his house with arms, 28 Tutini and Verde, Racconto della sollevatione, p. 80. 29 In the second capitoli [items of accord], the people asked for the castle; the viceroy swore he would back their request with the king. And the Duke of Arcos promised a bishopric to the son of Polito. The attempt to conquer the castle came to an end. See Villari, Un sogno di libertà, pp. 447–448. 30 Villari, citing Capecelatro’s Diario, writes: “Five feluccas were sent to induce the people of Ischia to revolt and to obtain from the island’s governor the consignment of the fortress. The episode is interpreted by S. D’Alessio (Masaniello, pp. 159–160) as an attempt by Masaniello to flee, but this has no confirmation in the story or the judgment of Capecelatro,” p. 625, note 123. On this point, Capecelatro writes: “Among these follies of his, he mixed in a work worthy of the greatest esteem, if he had succeeded, for he sent five feluccas with forty musketeers and his nephew to the island of Ischia, to ask Giovanni Battaglino, who governed it for the Marquise of Pescara, to send him the keys of that very strong castle.” Diario di F.C. contenente la storia delle cose avvenute nel Reame di Napoli negli anni 1647–1650, edited by Angelo Granito (Naples: Stabilimento tipografico di Gaetano Nobile, 1850), vol. I, pp. 91–92, this passage suggests that Masaniello tried to seize the powerful Ischian fortress, which belonged to the Avalos family. Andrea d’Avalos, Prince of Montesarchio, was very probably esteemed by Masaniello, who mentioned him as possible head of the grain supply (grassiere). 31 During the revolt, the prince offered his fealty to the Duke of Guise; after having cooperated with the Spaniards, he conspired against viceroy Oñate, and so was taken to Spain and not freed until 1652: see Michelangelo Schipa, “La congiura del principe di Montesarchio (1648),” in Idem, Studi masanielliani, p. 537; Maria Sirago, “Andrea d’Avalos, Principe di Montesarchio, generale dell’«armata del mar Oceano» (1613–1709),” Archivio storico per le province napoletane, CXXV, 2007: 173–209.

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and out of fear posted guards around, as far out as one can throw a stone, so that no person went through. Meanwhile, in the market one saw few people, and all was very quiet. After that the said Masaniello sent six well-armed feluccas [light sailing ships] from the Molo Piccolo to carry a message to Giovanni Battaglino, governor of the island (in place of his excellency the marquis del Vasto, its governor in the name of His Majesty), asking him to give him [Masaniello] the keys of the fortress, and the royal castle, and he wanted to station as a guard there the people [of Naples]. He was designing to make that place a refuge for his person. Battaglino, seeing so great a piece of mischief, and, even more, because that castle was one of the world’s great fortresses, standing on a very high cliff of naked rock, separated from the larger island by more than a musket shot, and you walk there by way of a little bridge [a low causeway] ten palms wide, and when there is bad weather the water goes over the top of that bridge, so that on account of its strength it withstood a two year siege by Pasha Barbarossa […].32

As we see here, Della Moneca writes of an attempt by Masaniello to conquer the castle as “a refuge for his person.” The passage confirms both his fear of death and his lucidity at the time. I would like to return for a moment to the question of madness. As readers will see, I have chosen to give voice to a variety of sources to show how the theory of a “provoked” or artificially induced madness is far from frivolous or groundless, as suggested by a number of writings, from Schipa to today.33 To take such a position would require us to ignore several seventeenth-century records. We would be dismissing a series of telling clues and attestations that we find especially in the manuscript chronicles, among them that of Giuseppe Pollio, an eyewitness, who wrote for posterity a dense Historia del Regno di Napoli: The said Tommaso Aniello seemed possessed by demons, so great were the pains in his body on account of the drink he had received, so that 32 Tizio della Moneca, Istoria delle revoluzioni di Napoli dell’anno 1647 del D. T. della M., SNSP XXVII C II, f. 62r. 33 For scholarly doubts regarding the alleged poisoning: Schipa, Studi masanielliani, p. 417: “Ripensando ora ai casi menzionati, quanta fede meriteranno le dicerie, propalate poi, circa la responsabilità del viceré nella demenza del Capitan generale? Che appunto quella sera di sabato venisse preparata la ‘bevanda per farlo impazzire’?”; according to Villari, for example, the rumour of Masaniello’s madness was an expedient to facilitate the decision to eliminate him: Villari, “Masaniello. Interpretazioni contemporanee e recenti,” in Villari, Elogio della dissimulazione, p. 84; see also his Un sogno di libertà, p. 341: “La pazzia di Masaniello fu, in sostanza, la sua insubordinazione […].”

22 Masaniello

he had no rest day and night, so that many persons of judgement were forced to take the said Tommaso Aniello and with kind words they led him upstairs in his house. All told, those who led him had more tears in their eyes, than pleasure.34

Another very clear testimony comes from an anonymous author: On that Monday of the month of July, Masaniello said that he wanted to take all the silver goods of the churches, and he began to act in a delirious fashion, so that the acted like a madman, as he was in fact going off his head, or perhaps because he was not eating, or because he was not sleeping, or because he had picked up some smell, or eaten or drunks something that made him mad, and he was always drinking, and he threw himself into the fountain that is at the market, and said that he felt a great burning in his stomach.35

There is a not banal clue in a poem: Tanto fé, tanto oprò, che come volle L’empio Marran, fè il mio Tomaso folle E fu da congiurati l’infelice Nella Chiesa Real del Carmin morto.36 He did what he could, and saw to it, as he desired, that wicked Spaniard, he made my Tommaso mad, And, the unlucky fellow by the conspirators, in the royal Carmine church, was killed.

A reader of the sources could learn more about this matter from their pages relating to Sunday, 14 July. Meanwhile it is worth to keep in mind that, in those days, the use of opium or other drugs was common, whether to eliminate an enemy or political foe37 or to capture someone to shake him 34 Pollio, Historia del Regno di Napoli, f. 11v. 35 Anonimo, Relatione della sollevatione della città di Napoli dell’anno 1647, in BAV, Misc. Arm. III 2, ff. 355r–362v: 359r. 36 Partenope offesa. Racconto delli pietosi successi di Napoli composta da C.L. Anne, with a dedication to Gennaro Annese, Napoli, Biblioteca dei Girolamini, ms. 38.3.13 f. Marrano was pejorative slang for Spaniard. It implied that Spaniards were all Crypto-Jews. 37 Pau Claris, the famous leader of the Catalan revolt (Dec. 1640) was very probably poisoned (he died in February 1641); Parker, Global Crisis, p. 746: Alessandro Pastore, Veleno. Credenze,

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down for news.38 Obviously, whoever commissioned or committed such a deed took pains to see that no one told. Thus, it is no accident that, on this matter, there is a notable difference between the first printed accounts and those manuscripts. The printed accounts by Giraffi and Gabriele Tontoli cast their lot with the natural madness hypothesis, as they are mindful that Masaniello almost never ate and that he was flagging sorely from excessive fatigue (true indeed, but this does not exclude the use of compounds that fog the mind). Moreover, both writers evoke exemplary historic personages who fell for a variery of reasons, from pride to madness.39 The present English volume, in observance of an agreement with the Italian publisher, is quite faithful to the Italian version of 2007, but it has been brought up to date in some notes and a few passages in the text. However, I would like to take advantage of this foreword to cite one unpublished source that I have recently consulted. It was written by a foreigner, a monk, who, while living in the convent of the Carmine, at the market, managed to send his reader an account of the revolt’s first days. 40 His point of view is marked by fear of the people in arms, and by evident antipathy for the young man who had unexpectedly taken charge and was firing off orders about everything and impeding normal life. His report is nevertheless packed with evidence about the climate of those first days, both inside and outside the convent; it helps us to picture certain scenes. For instance, the monk describes Masaniello’s influence over “all the people”: In the opinion of all the people, the fellow was thought a monster of nature, a miracle of heaven. They called him “the man of God, the heavenly oracle, a sent messenger, an angel in the flesh.” His speech was heeded as if divine. He gave orders in such a way that men thought his commands to be from heaven. His words seemed judgments; nobody could understand crimini, saperi nell’Italia moderna (Bologna: il Mulino, 2010), with various examples of poisoners from every social class from the lowest to the princes, both in Italy and elsewhere. 38 The nunzio Spinola tells us that a man was caught in Rome, induced to drink opium, and then brought to Naples for grilling, because the viceroy wanted information about a conspiracy: letter of 18 March 1656, in Venice, ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Napoli, vol. 56, f. 39r. 39 Giraffi gathers together assorted personages, from Alexander the Great to Caesar, infected with madness and tyranny: Le rivolutioni, p. 177 ff.; Gabriele Tontoli, Il Mas’Aniello, overo Discorsi narrativi la sollevazione di Napoli (Naples: R. Mollo, 1648), pp. 48 ff., summons, among others, Tarquin the Proud; such talk was common in an age when “novelty” carried a stigma. See Rosario Villari, The Rebel in Baroque Personae, edited by Rosario Villari, translated by Lydia G. Cochrane (Chicago, IL and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1995), pp. 100–125. 40 BNF, Paris, Fond Dupuy, ms. 674: Relation des mouvemens de Naples èn annes 1647–1648, f. 13v.

24 Masaniello

how a man so lowly, so devoid of powers, could do or say so much. In the end they found a horse, and when he mounted he seemed a sack with clothes on, an ape on horseback […].”

A little further on, the monk suggests that Masaniello learned by night what he had to say by day. And he adds some important details about the rebel’s devotion to the Virgin of the Carmine: “he was asked what had moved him to making this rising. He answered (I do not know if by chance, or by guile, or even for the truth) that he had been inspired by the Madonna of the Carmine and by the Carmelite saints.” The monk tells us that he had probably been inspired by a painting in their “dormitory, where there is portrayed the Madonna of the Carmine, with our saints, male and female, so it is a likely thing that the representation of those things made him answer in that fashion.” The Carmelite then turns his mind to the church of the Carmine, giving a clear image of how it had become a refuge and discussion place for thousands of men and women. On the third day, it was the destination for the standard-bearers (alfieri) of the People, who came seeking the Virgin’s protection. “They entered on their knees and commended themselves and their [military] companies.” The monastery seemed to be like the “synagogue of Jerusalem.” “All the bees in Hybla [a Sicilian place famed in Antiquity for honey] would not have made so great a buzz. It was all full of armed men, who were not part of the companies.”41 On the day of the armed plot to kill Masaniello (Tuesday, Day 9), the monk was in the convent. He thus describes in great detail the panic that followed the gunshots, the wounding, and the climate of fear that infected him, as it did everyone.42 He was in the church when shots rang out, and witnessed a scene that was seen by other writers too, but he made sure to recount it. It is one of the very rare scenes where Masaniello’s mother surfaces. In the moments right after the plot, Masaniello, afraid, asked for his mother’s blessing. Prostrate on the ground, with tears in his eyes, he asked for the maternal blessing; the mother was crying, Masaniello was crying and they made a concert of sobs. In the end the lord cardinal ordered the mother to give the benediction. Masaniello left. The cardinal was very affectionate with the mother. He went up into the pulpit, and issued a decree to the market, 41 Ibid., f. 6v. The monk’s displeasure at having to put up with the turmoil is clear; it was all at the desire of “signor Masaniello.” Note that the title “signor,” attached to Masaniello, signalled an exceptional event. As for the bees, Hybla, in Sicily, was famous in Antiquity and in Greek bucolic poetry for its honey. 42 Ibid., f. 10r.

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that no one should go into the church armed, under pain of decapitation. It was not a decree, but a holy precept, because the precepts of God are not so promptly observed. 43

Soon thereafter, Masaniello was reconciled with the cardinal (he f irst thought him an accomplice of the bandits who had fired at him), and thanked him for what he had done for the people. Calling him “devoted to the people,” Masaniello then had the viceroy acclaimed, with “express demonstration of fidelity towards the crown of the king of Spain, and he also gave an order to the people, that all the houses of the nobles should put before their doors the arms of the king and of the People, under pain of being burned.” So, the monk helps us see the fragility of Masaniello the hero, and to grasp the mix of courage, fear, desperation, search for comfort, and doubt that made him stay on as Capitan Generale after the attempt on his life, despite the plots and the ambiguous conduct of some men he saw as models, like the cardinal. Other details in this source prove how elaborate the viceroy’s strategy was, which aimed to isolate Masaniello and crack the popular front. It helps to prove that from the Monday on, people began to speak of “crazy” Masaniello. That was the day after, as all records recount, he stopped at the viceroy’s palace, and then went, in the viceroy’s gondola, to the Posillipo shore with men from his entourage. On the Monday, writes the monk, “they began to discover that Masaniello was a madman” because, in arrogant fashion, he commanded many persons living in the Lavinaio district to leave their houses, so that he could demolish them to erect a palace for himself. He had a knife in his hand, with which he threatened anyone who was slow to move away or who approached him. That evening, the viceroy’s gondola came to fetch him. It arrived at the shore by the Carmine, so that the people, already struck by Masaniello’s violent and bizarre behaviour, saw it. In the eyes of the “barefoot folk,” disenchanted and habituated to betrayals, that gondola signalled an unpardonable change in status. “That evening, [Masaniello] went out for pleasure in the viceroy’s felucca, which came to fetch him at the port at the feet of our convent.” The monk goes on: Masaniello stepped into the sea with his shoes on. To the barefoot poor, those shoes, too, must have seemed like a sign of a blameworthy change. He wanted to walk in the water with his shoes on, and to be carried across in people’s arms. He stripped naked, and had a good swim. Then, he entered the gondola and went for a ride, and when he returned, he 43 Ibid., ff. 9v–10r.

26 Masaniello

likewise desired to descend on his own from the felucca, and to walk in the water with his shoes on, nor did he wish to be carried in the sedan chairs that had been readied, and he went, acting crazy, down the streets.

With such behaviour, the viceroy and the leaders of the people could move against him. Other interesting statements, towards the end of the monk’s account, after Masaniello’s funeral, teach us more than we once knew about the viceroy’s stance. After taking possession of the goods found in Masaniello’s house, the viceroy, frightened and also keen to keep the plebs on side, began to call himself “capo del popolo” and to exercise rough justice in the harsh fashion of his late enemy. He thus commanded that whoever spoke against the capitoli, the recent settlement, or against the current rising, should be arrested “by the people itself, and brought to him, giving an excellent reward to the person who brought him, if on any day from now on a person is caught,” writes the monk, “and sometimes three, or four are hanged, and they cut off their heads, and they send them to the galleys, and now one runs into a goodly number.” Masaniello, now dead, had left a model, a dress to put on, or a spirit to appropriate. The monk adds, “among the others, one day an old man mounted a horse with sword in hand, persuading the people to rise, and to follow him, for he said that he had inherited the spirit of Masaniello; he was arrested and taken to the viceroy, to receive the punishment like the others; and another was beheaded, a man who wanted to take our Madonna, the crucifix, and then he tried to persuade the people to set fire to the monastery.” It is no accident that the terms Capopopolo and Masaniello were interchangeable. As late as 1658, a junta of rebels called its leaders “Masanielli.”44 When we study the history of the myth, we encounter as many attempts to evoke the old Capopopolo as we do condemnations of him, on the grounds that he had been a bad or stupid councillor. Only the seventeenth-century accounts, cited in the first half of this book, can bring us close to the true Tommaso Aniello and perhaps the reader will come to appreciate Tutini and Verde’s comment: “those of the people’s party should have taken care of Masaniello, to guard him, and protect him, and not allow him to traffic with the Spaniards, and when they sent him that bouquet of flowers, not allow him to sniff it, when they invited him to take his ease at Posillipo, not to let him go […].” 44 Pietro Messina, Introduction in Tutini-Verde, Il Racconto della sollevatione, p. xxvii. On the more recent uses of the term “masaniello” in the sense of a generic rebel, see Aurelio Musi, Masaniello. Il masaniellismo e la degradazione di un mito (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2019).

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Introduc tion to the Present Edition

The two authors say a thing we do not expect when one speaks of heroes: “to protect him.”45 * And now, a few words to thank my new “benefactors”: above all Samuel Kline Cohn, with whom I share interests both in popular revolts and in epidemics. Without his invitation to propose my book to Amsterdam University Press and his kind and generous support, this English edition never would have come about. I am very grateful to Erika Gaffney for her intelligent, sensitive mediation with the publishing house and her constant attention in my regard. I thank the publishing house for the permission to publish this translation and I thank Thomas Cohen for the ever-youthful enthusiasm that he brought both to my invitation to translate this volume and to our entire interaction. Sometimes life delivers more than we expect of it, as certainly it did this time. Tom, a veteran historian of sixteenth-century Italy, believed deeply in the project and translated in lively fashion even the prickliest Neapolitan words and expressions. One aspiration from which this translation was conceived was to contribute to a larger cause. 46

45 Obviously, when one tries to define a hero, one never bring up his fragility. One stresses his exceptional virtues, even superhuman, thanks to God (for some seventeenth-century writers): the hero is “a person called forth by God and one who possesses extraordinary gifts exceeding the common condition of men. He accomplishes miraculous deeds that other mortals cannot imitate, deeds which produce the most triumphant success”: Matthiae Christianus and Georgius Pfankuch, “De Virtute Heroica,” in Collegium ethicum III […] (Gießen: Kaspar Chemlinus, 1613), pp. 193–224, quoted and translated by Ronald G. Asch, in “The Hero in the Early Modern Period and Beyond: An Elusive Cultural Construct and Indispensable Focus of Social Identity?,” Helden, heroes, héros. Special Issue I, 2014: DOI: 10.6094/helden.heros.heros./2014/QM, pp. 5–14. 46 The larger cause is, of course, the increase of the general knowledge of the troubled history of Naples in the wake of many works, among them: Tommaso Astarita, Between Salt Water and Holy Water: A History of Southern Italy (London: W.W. Norton, 2005); the essays in Spain in Italy: Politics, Society, and Religion 1500–1700, edited by Thomas Dandelet and John Marino (Leiden: Brill, 2006); John Marino, Becoming Neapolitan: Citizen Culture in Baroque Naples (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011); Astarita (ed.), A Companion to Early Modern Naples; Melissa Calaresu and Helen Hills (eds.), New approaches to Naples c. 1500–c.1800: The Power of Place (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013) and also A Companion to Early Modern Naples; Gabriel Guarino, Representing the King’s Splendour: Communication and Reception of Symbolic Forms of Power in Viceregal Naples (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010); Alain Hugon, Naples insurgée; Céline Dauverd, Church and State in Spanish Italy: Rituals and Legitimacy in the Kingdom of Naples (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), pp. 185–217.



Premise

If ever an event in the history of Napes, before the revolution of 1799, left a resounding echo, it is the so-called Revolt of Masaniello, which began on 7 July 1647, and ended with the city’s surrender to the Spaniards on 6 April 1648. The revolt at once seemed exceptional. In a matter of days, Masaniello, a young man born in Naples, dressed as a sailor – red cloth hat, white loose leggings – became “head” of the entire city, so populous a place that it ranked alongside London or Paris. The written words of witnesses show their astonishment at the absolute obedience this young man commanded. The Venetian resident (the proper title for ambassadors not to a sovereign, but to a mere viceroy) laid it all out plainly: on 10 July, the people’s head was a young fisherman, about 24 years old, whom, though he went barefoot, everybody in like fashion obeyed, named Tommaso Aniello d’Amalfi […] whatever occurred to him, he issued as an order, and anyone who disobeyed he decapitated at once, with no recourse, having, to secure himself from traps, commanded upon pain of death that no one dare wear a cape, and that at night everyone should keep a light burning at the windows.1

There is now a great body of scholarly literature about the revolt. It runs from the works of Michelangelo Schipa, La cosi detta rivoluzione di Masaniello and La mente di Masaniello, dating from 1913 and 1918, to those by Rosario Villari on the origins of the event, on its assorted moments, and on the writings that arose throughout its course: his La rivolta antispagnola a Napoli. Le origini 1585–1647 and Per il re per la patria, to name but two. There is the volume by Aurelio Musi, La rivolta di Masaniello nella scena politica barocca (1989) and his many essays. There are also the Masaniello pages of Franco Benigno in Specchi della rivoluzione (1994), and, finally, there is Giuseppe Galasso’s reconstruction of the entire revolt, in the volume of the Storia d’Italia devoted entirely to the Kingdom of Naples.2 1 La rivoluzione di Masaniello vista dal residente veneto a Napoli, edited by Antonio Capograssi, in Archivio storico per le province napoletane, n.s., XXIII (1952): 167–235. The Venetian resident was Andrea Rosso. 2 Schipa, “La mente di Masaniello e la cosiddetta rivoluzione di Masaniello,” in idem, Studi masanielliani, pp. 319–324; Rosario Villari, La rivolta antispagnola a Napoli. Le origini 1585–1647 (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1994); Musi, La rivolta di Masaniello; Vittorio Dini, Masaniello.

30 Masaniello

What has so far been lacking, however, is a study of Masaniello that casts light on who this man was – a f igure certainly among the most famous of Neapolitans – what his role was in those July days, how his power grew from day to day to make him “king” of the city, and how, soon after, he lost f irst his reputation and then his very life? The historian Michelangelo Schipa attended less to Masaniello than he did to the man who seemed to be his guiding mind, the octogenerian dottore of law, Giulio Genoino. To Schipa, Masaniello was a mere tool in Genoino’s hands. From the days when he was chosen Eletto del Popolo (representative of the Popolo), under Viceroy Osuna (1616–1620), Genoino long intended to effect reform that would give the people the same power as the nobles. He believed that he could use the youngster to bring about this design, at a moment when discontent regarding the many gabelle (excise taxes) was at its peak. According to Schipa, rather than attend to Masaniello, one should focus on the dottore: the “Revolt of Masaniello” was in reality the revolt of Genoino. According to Musi, however, Schipa’s vision overlooks things that surface in contemporary records. It fails to recognize the crucial role the young man from Lavinaio played in those few days; Masaniello drew together diverse strata of the Neapolitan plebs, guaranteeing the revolt’s success. Musi cites a passage from an acute observer: At this point there appeared a lowly fishmonger who not only commanded a numerous body of people of the sort from Naples, and the adjacent casali [districts], but also ruled with prudence (and he was just a youngster), and discoursed with acuity and ingenuity […] and the soldiers were amazed to see that a man who had never handled arms, or seen a field or a fortress, could hold forth and lay out trenches, and defence works, and sentinels and patrols.3

L’eroe e il mito (Rome: Newton Compton, 1995); Giuseppe Galasso, “Il Regno di Napoli. Il Mezzogiorno spagnolo e austriaco (1622–1734),” in Storia d’Italia vol. XV (Turin: UTET, 2006), tome 3, pp. 247–552, ch. VIII–XV; now the historiography is much wider. Just a few titles: Francesco Benigno, Mirrors of Revolution: Conflict and Political Identity in Early Modern Europe (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010); Alain Hugon, Naples insurgée, and the Spanish edition: La insurrección de Nápoles, 1647–1648. La construcción del acontecimiento (Zaragoza: Universidad de Zaragoza, 2014); Villari, Un sogno di libertà. I refer to other works by these same authors and by others on subsequent pages. 3 Maiolino Bisaccioni, Historia delle guerre civili (Venice: F. Storti, 1655), p. 121.

Premise

31

The young man proved capable of a certain autonomy: besides the abilities cited from Bisaccioni, he could also handle the unexpected. 4 Other scholars, too, have been baffled by Schipa’s exposition of the revolt and his treatment of the Capopopolo. That said, they do approve of his analysis of the cultural background to the uprising. Vittorio Dini writes of Schipa: “he speaks of Genoino as ‘the mind of Masaniello,’ but this is an exaggeration, over-rating Genoino’s role and under-rating Masaniello’s.”5 The present book is an historical biography, using both published and unpublished sources.6 My research has turned up two sources never before cited: the first, the more interesting, is an account of the revolt down to April 1648. It survives as a single copy, which I consulted at the Casanatense Library in Rome. It is in rather good condition, and seems to be a transcription of a lost original.7 Very likely in the author’s own hand, the manuscript lacks a first page; thus we have no title or author’s signature or name. In its first pages, the author does depict himself in passing. It was, he says, just one day after the revolt’s outbreak. The viceroy summoned him, through a knight, a friend of his who was in prison, whose name he fails to furnish, telling him to go to Castel Nuovo, the seat of viceregal rule. He writes: “That morning, when I was called to Castel Nuovo by a knight, my friend, who was jailed on the orders of His Excellency, I went to the castle, at the moment when His Excellency went out onto the stage with all the nobility, the Council of State, and the Collateral Council.”8 This passage, and other information within the story, suggest that the author was close to the viceroy and his ministers. Still, it is unclear to whom he was writing; whoever this reader is, the author uses the familiar tu pronoun, a sign of social equality: 4 An example of Masaniello’s confronting the unexpected: in those days, “he circulates among the shops and sets the prices of foods,” Musi, La rivolta di Masaniello, pp. 117–118. 5 Dini, Masaniello, p. 25. 6 See also the excellent work of Bartolommeo Capasso, La piazza del mercato di Napoli e la casa di Masaniello (1868) and La casa e la famiglia di Masaniello, ricordi della storia e della vita napoletana nel secolo XVII (1893), now republished in Capasso, Masaniello. La sua vita la sua rivoluzione, edited by Luca Torre (Naples: Torre, 1993), pp. 19–59, 64–136. As for the biographies in circulation, I return to them below. They are rich in interesting passages, but also keen to round out the myth, the story of which I will be presenting here. 7 Catalogued as: Anonymous, Narrazione della rivolta. The chronicle, which is missing its first page, is an account of the revolt. In the pages devoted to the events from August onwards, it is much more passionate. The author becomes partial, very critical of the people, and invites them to withdraw, in light of the character of the Spaniards, who are incapable of pardoning. Down to 18 April (to folio 412r), the chronicle is continuous. There follows a letter to Don Juan de Austria and other texts, to folio 491. 8 Ibid., f. 22v.

32 Masaniello

“Masaniello sent Honofrio Cafiero, an arrogant roughneck from Santa Lucia, who, when he has time, will explain his [Cafiero’s] nature to you [a te].”9 What makes this source so special is its extraordinary richness of information about Masaniello. Clearly, the author swiftly became aware of the young man’s determination and chose to track him and gather what news he could about him. His information is generally reliable; not only do we sometimes find confirmation of things we know, but it also targeted a reader who seemed to wish to learn exactly what was happening. The anonymous author had his own position, of course, but he did not write to propound his own reading of those July days. Clearly, he was aware both of the revolt’s legitimacy and of the Spaniards’ superiority and their determination to keep hold of the kingdom. The initial pages of the account reveal that it was clear to the anonymous writer that the people were in no state to suffer more burdens. The citizens, he writes, had no place of recourse, given that their cries were not heard, nor were their tears beheld by anyone […] Under so great a weight, the most faithful people of Naples, almost Atlas, who bore the upon its shoulders a world of gabelle, and the weight of new impositions about to fall on it, cast its lot with fate, which had brought it so low, but still, faithful as it was to its king, believing that what it was suffering was necessary for the maintenance of the kingdoms of his Catholic Majesty, inclined its head, and let itself be burdened in accordance with the judgment, and tyranny, of him who ruled it.

Nor does the author mince words about those persons responsible for the gabelle, and in particular about those who had introduced the last most detested tax on fruit. At the onset, they had fooled the people, saying that the viceroy would abolish the gabelle, which he did, but only just before the rising. Their goal, writes the Casanatense Anonymous (we label him this way, to distinguish him from the many other anonymous authors), was “to trick them, to suck their blood from their hearts, as their veins did not suffice.”10 These words, which distance the victims, suggest that the writer was by origin not a fellow Neapolitan, but a Roman; further research on the manuscript might support this hunch. 9 Ibid., f. 41r. 10 Ibid., f. 6v.

Premise

33

Meanwhile, as we shall soon see, thanks to this account we know more about Masaniello’s actions in the revolt’s first days. The leadership of the young man from the Mercato was acclaimed after the third day, the morning after a conspiracy failed to harm him. It was a coup not only by the nobles, but also by some leaders of the popolo. From the same source, we also learn useful new things about Masaniello’s past and about his family, which was very poor and distressed (his mother worked as a prostitute). According to the manuscript’s author, Genoino still played an important role. On the first day of the revolt, the plebeians had demanded the “privilege” of “Cola Quinto” (Carlo Quinto, Emperor Charles V). They meant the charter that conceded to the people the same political power as the nobles: if they had not learned from Genoino, how could the plebeians know such things? Nevertheless, Casanatense Anonymous, writing in great detail, asserts that Masaniello was already determined to take part on his own account and that he had two basic goals: the abolition of the gabelle and, when the revolt ended, a general pardon. He therefore listened to the legal dottori, not solely to Genoino, and, with them, he drafted demands to put before the viceroy, on matters that ample public backing had consigned to his hands. Masaniello may have had a certain respect for Charles V; very likely he shared a mythic-holy vision of the king, fostered by the Spaniards.11 But Genoino, the author implies, was no Spanish loyalist. To put it better, on the one hand, the dottore acted as if he was faithful; on the other, he hoped that Naples, like Catalonia, which was also rebelling, might free itself from Spain.12 Thus, Masaniello was very dependent on what the sly dottore suggested, 11 For the divinity of the monarchy, see John H. Elliott, “Poder y propaganda en la España del Felipe IV,” in Homaje a José Antonio Maravall, edited by María del Carmen Iglesias, Carlos Moya Valgañón, and Luis Rodríguez Zúñiga (Madrid: Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas, vol. III, 1985), pp. 15–42; within the monarchy, there was continual allusion to the sanctity of the king; for other countries, the king of Spain was always the “más católico de los reyes”; on the inside, this fostered cohesion. Thus, when the revolt broke out, a ready mechanism clicked into place: “the image of a supremely just king, remote but always accessible when needed, adjusts an escape valve in societies that are subject to social and economic exploitation, or to administrative abuses. When the rebels shouted ‘via el rey y muera el mal gobierno,’ as they did in Catalonia and in Spanish Italy in the 1640s, the security mechanism functioned as was intended.” 12 In many places, the author suggests that Genoino disliked the Spaniards: Casanatense Anonymous, Narrazione della rivolta, f. 65r, where he asserts that the “impertinence” of the demands put to the viceroy, after the first days of the revolt, was due to the dottore, “nemico dei cavalieri e degli Spagnoli.” The author appears to dislike the dottore strongly. Still, it is likely that Genoino tried to aim for reform while keeping a rapport with Madrid, but he was also hostile to the Spaniards, given his clear picture of how the gabelle were brought in, and also his own history of persecution, as we shall soon show.

34 Masaniello

and many agreed with him. Later in this book I will rely on other pages of this work so useful for my reconstruction. The other source never before cited is a Vita di Masaniello, also from the seventeenth century, currently held at the Vatican Library.13 The author seems to have written for a broader audience than that of the Casanatense author: he, too, offers important information, some of it novel. He was the first to recount the sailor’s early life: he gathered information and tried to reconstruct the man’s past. According to him, Masaniello had served the Duke of Maddaloni and then, dismissed by the duke, had gone to serve a fishmonger “named Mattia Catania, with whom he remained for a long time, and gained very little, except the ability to distinguish among the fish and learn their various names.” What is most interesting is what he says about Masaniello’s histrionic nature. True, he seems here to revert to the stereotype of the dramatic Neapolitan, yet this portrait shares traits with other accounts: he was a fellow who made his way by knowing how to please whomever he chanced to meet: “his nature was agreeable, so that many wanted him present when talk was afoot, in conversations, in song, and in playing a certain cetra [a kind of mandolin], which he had learned to do in the house of his master, so that, when he was cheerful, he drew a goodly crowd.”14 The Vita di Masaniello is also a single copy, part of a series, in three volumes of papers on the revolt in the Vatican Library series Urbinatenses Latini. The document testifies to the great interest the event aroused, and to the swift spread of the desire to know about it. In the other two volumes of this collection appear accounts of the executions under Masaniello’s rule, and of events of the time, both known and novel.15 The handwriting in the three volumes seems consistent throughout, but the author’s identity and intentions remain an open question.16 13 Anon., Vita di Masaniello cioè sue fortune nella Ribellione suo Comando, honori e morte dal Sig. D. Capiciolatro nel tempo istesso di detta Ribellione divisa in quatordeci giornate undici vivente detto Massaniello, e 3 doppo la morte di esso, con la morte del Abbate Gio. Antonio Grassi uno de Congiurati in detta morte al detto Masaniello, Vatican City, BAV, Urb. Lat. 1746, ff. 328 (T. I). 14 Ibid., f. 2r. 15 Aside from the Vita di Masaniello, the volumes are: Tomo II, Di Relationi diverse di Giustitie fatte in Napoli molte delle quali seguite in tempo di Massaniello et altre doppo la Ribellione di alcuni Capi di essa, Vatican City, BAV, Urb. Lat. 1747, ff. 409, and Tomo III. Delle Revolutioni di Napoli cioè la congiura di Giovannello, Simon Valenzo Peroni, e Filippo Colonna e sue morti, Vatican City, BAV, Urb. Lat. 1748, ff. 202. 16 What makes the identity of the author more complex, but also more interesting, is that in the second volume of the series, in the margin of a story of the death of “Pellegrino di Gio. Angelo,” appear a few words saying that it is by Alessandro Giraffi (f. 146r), the writer of the first

35

Premise

To reconstruct the Masaniello affair, the present book also pays particular attention to some other sources that are already known but little used or utterly neglected: those by Giuseppe Pollio, a cleric of the time, by the dottore Tizio Della Moneca, and by the deeply pious dottore Tarquinio Simonetta, among others.17 It has relied heavily on such sources and inserted passages that bring to light events and actions by Masaniello, to reanimate those July days, among the most intense ever in the history of Naples. We must stress how dramatic the whole event was.18 Masaniello fell victim to a well-contrived plot: which would cost him first his credibility and then his life. The biography presented here recounts this history and tells a deeply tragic tale: it was precisely when Masaniello, grateful to the viceroy for the gracious concessions granted under pressures he had brought to bear, started to act like his most devoted subject, that the “fall,” which would lead him to his death, began. Our story does not end with that event, or with the majestic, thronged funeral that followed. The book has two parts: the first reconstructs those days of revolt where Masaniello played a role; the second explores the basic texts that reoffered and relayed the image of the Capopopolo, down to recent years. Readers will see Masaniello rewritten down the centuries, depending on the goals and cultural backgrounds of the authors. “Masaniello as hero” was primarily a theme in just one season, the Risorgimento. Then, he served to bolster a search by many hands for figures to propose to the people of Naples, to stir them to free themselves from foreign rule. Other scholars have also followed this route, but we pushed further, to discover that Masaniello often played an important role in the history of Naples, and it is for this reason that he has been – and still is – viewed as part of the city’s identity. *

printed account of the revolt, who was certainly very close to Cardinal Filomarino: “Un’esemplare cronologia. Le rivolutioni di Napoli di Alessandro Giraffi (1647),” Annali dell’Istituto Italiano per gli studi Storici, XV (1998): 287–340; see now the edition in French, by Jacqueline Malherbe-Galy, Jean-Luc Nardone (Toulouse: Anarchasis, 2010). 17 In my account, I will refer to all the authors cited in this list; see also the useful references in Saverio Di Franco, “Le rivolte del regno di Napoli del 1647–48 nei manoscritti napoletani,” in Archivio storico per le province napoletane, CXXV (2007), pp. 327–457. 18 For Masaniello’s theatricality, see Antonio Ghirelli, “La tragedia di Masaniello,” in Ghirelli, Storia di Napoli (Turin: Einaudi, 1973), pp. 48–63.

36 Masaniello

As I go to press, I wish to thank the many persons who have given me suggestions and advice, or simply imparted the serenity of spirit needed to complete it. Above all, Professor Giuseppe Galasso asked me to write it, showing confidence in me. It goes without saying that in all my research, I consulted his writings, always precious for the story that I was writing. In particular, I owe him gratitude for alerting me to the importance of Mazzini for Masaniello’s nineteenth-century fortunes. I thank Professor Aurelio Musi for keeping an eye on this work, especially in its final phases, reading an earlier draft of the book, and making comments. I owe him thanks for the support and for the useful comments during that process. And then I must thank Professor Enrico Nuzzo, for his generosity and our dialogues in the pleasant atmosphere of the mense of the University of Salerno. Friends and colleagues have helped me in various ways: I thank in particular Professoressa Michele Benaiteau, who was a fundamental intellectual anchor for me; and also Professors Maurizio Cambi, Giuseppe Cirillo, Giacomo de Cristofaro, Vittorio Dini, Roberto Esposito, Antonio Gisondi, Christiane Groeben, Franco Moretti, Aniello Montano, Silvio Perrella, Francesco Piro, Marco Russo, Amneris Roselli, Domenico Taranto, Stefano Villani (I hope I am not forgetting anyone), for all sorts of aid and counsel; Dr. Mariolina Rascaglia, Patrizia Nocera, and, in general, all the staff of the manuscripts section of the Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli; to my friend and colleague Saverio Di Franco, for our exchange of ideas on many afternoons at the Nazionale di Napoli. Thanks, finally, to my family and to Manuel, for patience and joie de vivre.

Part I The Life

I. Naples in the Time of Masaniello Abstract Working with the authors closest to the events, this chapter takes up the revolt’s proximate causes: the weakness and inequity of the city’s institutions, and the fiscal burdens on the populace. Giulio Genoino, a learned lawyer who has long championed electoral parity across the classes, speaks to the knights of the noble seggi against the most recent gabella. Both Genoino and Masaniello have suffered at the hands of the duke of Maddaloni, Diomede Carafa. But an alliance with the nobles is not easy, even if, with the rest of Naples, they share strong feelings against Spanish rule. Keywords: Naples, fiscal pressure, Noble seggi, Spanish government, Genoino

1.

Conditions of the City and the Kingdom

Masaniello appeared on the scene like a new David. As he came to the fore, many thought that he was the long-awaited “just avenger”. The author of an account, one that was never published, wrote enthusiastically: “Finally, the Divine Goodness, to show how immense is a spark of its providence, has sent a David to liberate a people so faithful from the too-cruel and inhumane tyranny of a Saul-like nobility.”1 This thought, that the revolt was holy, surfaces in witness reports, from that of the notary Giovan Francesco Montanario2 to that of the physician Giuseppe Donzelli,3 and to one by the Count of Modène, who was also 1 Anon., Succinta Relatione della sollevatione di Napoli occorsa nel presente anno 1647 a 7 di luglio giorno di Domenica sino alla morte di Tommas’Aniello, Vatican City, BAV, Chigi G VII 210, f. 64r. 2 Giovan Francesco Montanario, In questo libro vi sono notate tutte le cose notabili successe dall’anno 1640, apud Giovan F. M. Notaio di Napoli, Naples, BNN, XIV E 56, f. 1v. 3 Giuseppe Donzelli, Partenope liberata overo Racconto dell’Heroica risolutione fatta dal Popolo di Napoli per sottrarsi con tutto il Regno dall’Insopportabil Giogo delli Spagnuoli (Naples:

D’Alessio, S. Masaniello. The Life and Afterlife of a Neapolitan Revolutionary Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2022 doi: 10.5117/9789463721455_ch01

40 MASANIELLO

sure that the Neapolitan revolt (which began on 7 July 1647 and ended in June of the next year) was a propitious moment for his country, France. For Modène, Masaniello was “the terror of the Spaniard, the persecutor of the proud, the avenger of public oppressions, and the unique liberator of his distressed fatherland.”4 Why such certainty among observers? How did Masaniello, a man so lowly, manage to unite the opinions of a man of the cloth, a notary, a physician, and a French count? The chief cause can be found, above all, in the living conditions in Naples and the kingdom both before and after the introduction of the gabella on fruit, for which cause the already deep discontent over the many gabelle saddled on the “horse of Naples”, grew far greater. The fiscal pressure grew considerably, from the first year of the Count of Monterey’s viceroyalty (May 1630–November 1637). At the beginning of his chronicle of the revolt, Innocenzio Fuidoro explains that: From the rule of the Count of Monterey down to the rule of the Duke of Arcos, to support the wars that His Majesty waged with France, they laid on so many taxes and gabelle that they reduced this Kingdom of Naples to such poverty that every person, and almost all the people of the Kingdom, O. Beltrano, 1648), p. 7. Pietro Messina, “Giuseppe Donzelli e la rivoluzione napoletana del 1647–1648,” Studi storici, 28 (1987): 183–202; On the Accademia degli Oziosi as one of the places for the formation of the Neapolitan intellectual elite, see at least Aurelio Musi, “‘Non pigra quies’. Il linguaggio politico degli Accademici Oziosi e la rivolta napoletana del 1647–48,” in Musi, L’Italia dei viceré. Integrazione e resistenza nel sistema imperiale spagnolo (Cava de’ Tirreni: Avagliano, 2000), pp. 129–147; Girolamo De Miranda, Una quiete operosa. Forme e pratiche dell’Accademia napoletana degli Oziosi 1611–1645 (Naples: Jovene, 2000); Lorenza Gianfrancesco, “Accademie, scienze e celebrazioni a Napoli nel primo Seicento,” Quaderni di Symbolon, V (2010): 175–209; Idem, “From Propaganda to Science: Looking at the World of Academies in Early Sevententh-century Naples,” in “The Disciplines of the Arts and Sciences in Naples: Medieval, Early Modern, Contemporary,” California Italian Studies, vol. 3, n. 1 (2012): 1–31; Pietro Giulio Riga, “Alcune note sulle tendenze letterarie nell’Accademia degli Oziosi,” in Le virtuose adunanze. La cultura accademica tra XVI e XVIII secolo (Avellino: Sinestesie, 2014), pp. 159–171. 4 Esprit de Raimond de Mormoiron Comte de Modène, Mémoires du comte de Modène, sur la révolution de Naples de 1647, published by J.-B. Mielle (Paris: Chez Pélicier et Chatel, 1827), tome I, p. 121 (first published in 1665–1667). Modène came to Naples in the train of the Duke of Guise. On 1 December 1647, Guise made him general maitre de champ and put him into service in the zone of Giugliano and Aversa, just north and west of Naples; see Michèle Benaiteau, “Note su Esprit Raymond de Mormoiron, comte de Modène, autore dell’Histoire des revolutions de la Ville et du Royaume de Naples,” in Tra res e imago. In memoria di Augusto Placanica, edited by Mirella Mafrici and Maria Rosaria Pelizzari (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2007), vol. II, pp. 575–590.

Naples in the Time of Masaniello

41

lacked what they needed to live on. Among the other gabelle that there were, they changed the gabella of flour to seven carlini per tomolo, so that in some years grain was worth the same as what they paid in gabella. There was also in place a tax on contracts of two ducats per hundred transacted, and paper with legal seal affixed was taxed at one grano per page; depending on the purpose of the decree or the contract, that added up to eight carlini per folio. Atop that, they imposed a carlino per tomolo for any sort of victuals, ten carlini per cantaro in weighed goods subject to the customs office called il Maggior Fondaco [warehouse], beyond the ordinary fees.5

The effects of Monterey’s regime on his subjects’ lives were deeply harmful. A poetic text in Neapolitan yokes Vesuvius, which during the 1631 eruption had “burnt” Naples, to the viceroy. Two mountains have burnt this poor and unblessed Kingdom Vesuvius enraged And Monterey unleashed But there is a difference between them That one swallows priests, this one swallows gold. That one carries the mountain to the sea, This one carries jewels and gold to Spain.6

From then on, living conditions in Naples and the kingdom went from bad to worse. Under the Duke of Medina (viceroy from 1637 to 1644) fiscal pressure increased greatly. Most new tax burdens fell on foodstuffs (flour, grains, salt, oil).7 5 Innocenzo Fuidoro, Successi historici raccolti dalla sollevatione di Napoli dell’anno 1647, edited by Anna Maria Giraldi and Marina Raffaeli, foreword by Rosario Villari (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 1994), p. 5. Fuidoro (Vincenzo d’Onofrio) took his baccalaureate in law in 1645. On this, see Ileana Del Bagno, Legum Doctores. La formazione del ceto giuridico a Napoli tra Cinque e Seicento, with foreword by Raffaele Ajello (Naples: Jovene, 1993), p. 383. Among the loyalist party (as Colapietra attested), he was still a fairly critical witness. For his biography, see the introductory pages of the volume cited above. 6 Anon., Passaggiero che bide sto Pataffio, Naples, BNN, Branc. III D 8, c. 284r; on the text, see also Lorenza Gianfrancesco, “Narratives and Representations of a Disaster in Early SeventeenthCentury Naples,” in Disaster Narratives, pp. 163–186. 7 Galasso, Il Regno di Napoli, pp. 147 ff. On these matters, and on the kingdom’s f inancial crisis, see also Villari, La rivolta antispagnola a Napoli, and Villari, The Neapolitan Financial Crisis of the 1630s and 1640s, and also Vittor Ivo Comparato, “Toward the Revolt of 1647,” in Good

42 MASANIELLO

The population was already hard pressed when the Viceroy Admiral of Castile arrived (May 1644). The new viceroy was well aware of the gravity of conditions in the city and the kingdom, but was required to ask for new efforts to finance Spain’s wars. Seeing how harsh the exactions were, and how much the population resented them, he resigned, saying that he did not wish so precious a “crystal” as Naples to break in his hands.8 The crystal broke in the hands of his successor, Viceroy Rodrigo Ponce de León, Duke of Arcos, who arrived in Naples in February 1646. The revolt in which Masaniello took part, as has long been known, was not only an outburst of anger at the many gabelle, but also a movement that aimed to break the very mechanisms that produced them. The city was represented by six seggi (administrative districts), five of them of nobles (Nido, Capuana, Montagna, Porta, and Portanova) and one of the People (the Popolo). The clear imbalance between People and nobles was yet worse because, for years, the Eletto of the People had been pre-chosen by the viceroy, as described by the seventeenth-century historian Francesco Capecelatro, himself a knight of the Capuana seggio. The captains of the ottine (urban districts) would propose six names; it then fell to the viceroy to pick the one among them he found most trustworthy.9 “The Eletto of the People was thus in fact made by the viceroy, because the Piazza of the People named six men, and from these he then chose one: and if those named failed to please him, he sent them back to name six others, excluding the first.”10 Therefore, the function of the Eletto was far from what it should have been: in place of defending the Government in Spanish Naples, edited and translated by Antonio Calabria and John A. Marino (New York: Peter Lang, 1990), pp. 237–274, 275–316. 8 Galasso, Il Regno di Napoli, pp. 239 ff. 9 Each ottina was an urban administrative unit and had its capitano: see Giovanni Muto, “Le tante città di una capitale. Napoli nella prima età moderna,” Storia urbana, 123 (2009): 19–54; Alain Hugon, Naples insurgée, p. 63. 10 Francesco Capecelatro, Degli Annali della città di Napoli di don F. Capecelatro, parti due (1631–1640) (Naples: Nobile, 1849), p. 2. For the workings of this electoral system, and for the off icials of the food supply in the time of Viceroy Pedro de Toledo, see Villari, The Revolt of Naples; Giovanni Muto, “Gestione politica e controllo sociale nella Napoli spagnola,” in Le città capitali, edited by Cesare De Seta (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1985), pp. 67–94. One goal of the revolt was to break the axis between the viceroy and the Eletto del popolo: Musi, La rivolta di Masaniello, pp. 132 ff.; Carlos José Hernando Sánchez, Castilla y Nápoles en el siglo XVI. Linaje, estado y cultura (1532–1553) (Salamanca: Junta de Castilla y Leon, 1994), pp. 248–249; Villari, Un sogno di libertà, pp. 15 ff. On Capecelatro, cavaliere of the noble seat of Capuana, see: Daniela De Liso, La scrittura della storia. Francesco Capecelatro (1594–1670) (Naples: Loffredo, 2004); see also Giulio Sodano on Capecelatro’s criticism of the political dealings of the viceroys with the Neapolitan nobility: “Le aristocrazie napoletane,” in Il Regno di Napoli nell’età di Filippo IV (1621–1665) (Milan, Guerrini e Associati, 2014), pp. 131–176.

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People from taxes, he tried to convince the knights to vote for the gabelle. He was not alone in these practices, however; he was helped by assorted men who chose to back the viceroy in exchange for his gratitude and favours. The chronicles of the revolt mention, in this regard, the Duke of Caivano, Giovann’Angelo Barile. The Casanatense Anonymous claims that the Eletto del Popolo, Andrea Naclerio, and the duke vied with one another to see who could garner more votes: so that “[the Duke of Caivano’s] house was a bank where all the money of the blood of the poor came running.”11 Fuidoro defines Caivano as “a man of great dextrousness, a great trafficker, and full of ambition.” He once saw him “pay money to a poor noble of the Montagna [seggio], who on account of his poverty lived on the island of Capri, a man of the Sanfelice lineage, who was summoned for this purpose, as were others who dwelt in some of the outlying districts, living either on their labours or on the small lands that they owned, or in their poverty.”12 Besides the Duke of Caivano, Ferrante Caracciolo, and the Carafa brothers, Diomede and Giuseppe, were well-known nobles who, using their own bandits, committed every sort of abuse with little respect for the viceroys, who had no wish to cross them. Some chroniclers claimed that, while the poor were persecuted, nobody went after the powerful. Fuidoro: “For the poor justice was oppressed, by the great who ruled and helped the other nobles to rule collectively, and they [the nobles] dominated the citizens, who were reduced almost to slavery.” Moreover, the civic tribunals were occupied by men who paid to hold office: Among the other marvels that were there, that caused so much grumbling, not only did the Viceroys use the said gabelle, but they also sold the royal offices, for instance, the auditore, the fiscale [prosecutor] and [those] of the provinces and civil and criminal judgeships of the Vicaria […]. Men of virtue, as if abandoned on account of the aforesaid misdeeds, as they were not rewarded were downcast and chastened when they saw virtue oppressed by the raising up of the ignorant, and the vicious were honoured and thieves were esteemed. And to give some particulars, it was seen that Andrea Marchese (by the way, a man worthy on account of birth and learning) was made president of the Consiglio having paid 11 Casanatense Anonymous, Narrazione della rivolta, ff. 2r–491. at f. 5r. 12 Giuseppe Campanile, Diario di G. C., circa la sollevazione della Plebe di Napoli ne gl’anni 1647 e 1648, con un’additione d’Innocenzo Fuidoro, che si nota con questo segno xx. Vincenzo d’Onofrio, SNSP, XXVIII C 5, f. 2r. Campanile belonged to the Accademia degli Oziosi and Umoristi and had a baccalaureate (Del Bagno, Legum Doctores, p. 282).

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thirty-five thousand ducats; Giovanni Battista Iovino from Afragola, a man beneath the ordinary, to become a councillor paid fifteen thousand ducats. The councillor Francesco Marciano, despite the services of councillor Marcello his father, a man of great experience and learning, also paid a great quantity of money. Fulvio Lanario was made avvocato fiscale [prosecutor] of the Royal Patrimony for twelve thousand ducats; Tomaso d’Aquino, although he had the nomination for councillor, nevertheless paid some sum of money.13

2.

An Odious Gabella

In February 1646, Roderigo Ponce de León, Duke of Arcos, replaced the Admiral of Castile as viceroy. A report to inform him of the condition of the city listed, among its problems, the aggressiveness of certain knights, especially those of the Carafa: there was no counting the violent deeds linked to their haughtiness and their urge to dominate the “territory.” A remedy was needed to make them feel the regime’s authority.14 It would be unfair to say that the Duke of Arcos did not try to remedy the situation. Even Fuidoro reports tensions between him and the nobility, soon after his arrival.15 Nevertheless, his attention was soon demanded elsewhere. At the start of the summer of 1646, Orbetello, a port on the Tuscan coast, an enclave under Spanish rule, came under siege by a French army led by prince Tommaso di Savoia. The viceroy sent thousands of soldiers and dependable commanders and, after a month, secured the precious outpost. But the emergency continued, as the French then turned to Portolongone, on Elba. Further efforts were called for. Though well aware of the stresses on the population, the Duke of Arcos asked for a donativo (a grant), of a million ducats. Given the conditions in the city and the Kingdom, the request was outrageous. The piazze (the civic seggi) consented to the demand, but imposed conditions on the viceroy: in exchange they requested greater autonomy and a direct line to the king.16 13 Fuidoro, Successi historici, pp. 7–8. 14 Cartas y noticias de Torante al Regno de Napoles e nel año del 1646, Madrid, BNM, ms. 1827, f. 54. This report was written in Naples by Sebastian de Morales on 4 February. 15 Fuidoro, Successi historici, p. 16. 16 The “conclusion” of the seggio meeting appears in “Annotazioni e documenti,” in Francesco Capecelatro, Diario di F. C. contenente la storia delle cose avvenute nel reame di Napoli negli anni 1647–1650 ora per la prima volta messo a stampa, edited by Marchese Angelo Granito (Naples: G. Nobile, 1850). The first documents appear in vol. I, pp. 6–10.

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At the same time, the seggi asked themselves which goods it might be possible to lay further exactions or gabelle on. One gabella on which the knights’ opinions converged was the “bonatenenza of incomes,” a tax that would have targeted both “foreigners” and inhabitants of the kingdom. The tax was never applied, perhaps because of the power foreigners enjoyed, the Genoese especially. As we know, they were central to the kingdom’s economy.17 Instead, gabelle were introduced on the only goods on which no fiscal burdens had yet been set: fruit, vegetables, tobacco, and “trade wood,” such as beams and planks. Clearly, a gabelle on fruit and vegetables would hit an already exhausted population. Those who expected a hand in tax administration had much sway over this decision, above all Antonio de Angelis, once a councillor of Viceroy Monterey, who hoped to have the delegazione (the exaction authority), and Carlo Spinelli, a knight of the Nido seggio, who likely hoped to shield the wine gabella, in which he had invested, from the risk of higher rates.18 The fruit tax was no easy matter: an episode was lodged firmly in the collective memory. To win over the city’s plebs, the Duke of Osuna (viceroy from 1616 to 1620)19 had abolished it in a very public fashion. He had gone to the house in the market where the funds were levied and, with a blow of his sword, cut the scales’ cord: “Thus the gabella on fruit is abolished!”20 Thereafter, no viceroy had dared reintroduce it, inter alia to avoid its being cited to stir up the popular faction. But the Duke of Arcos did so, or, rather, the seggi, to whom it fell to vote and to work out how to pay the donativi, did the deed. Spinelli advanced an enormous sum (from 60,000 to 100,000 ducats) to lay hands on the rights to the exaction’s income. Meanwhile, other institutions, such as the Monte di Pietà and the Casa dell’Annunziata, fell 17 That the Genoese feared the bonatenenza tax is clear from the letter of Cornelio Spinola, Genoese consul in Naples (since 1621): “è accaduto uno strano accidente che […] cagionerà molto maggior danno che la bonatenenza [a strange accident has happened that will cause greater damage than the bonatenenza],” Lettera di Cornelio Spinola del 9 di luglio, in Napoli. Lettere consoli, anni 1642–1653, Genoa, ASG, 2640; Aurelio Musi, Mercanti genovesi nel regno di Napoli (Naples: ESI, 1996); Giovanni Brancaccio, Nazione genovese. Consoli e colonia nella Napoli moderna (Naples: Guida, 2001); the Genoese community had the right to collect some indirect gabelle (especially on silk, grain, oil): Céline Dauverd, Imperial Ambition in the Early Modern Mediterranean: Genoese Merchants and the Spanish Crown (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), chapter V. 18 Capecelatro, Diario, p. 5; Musi, La rivolta di Masaniello, p. 108. 19 Carlo De Frede, I viceré spagnoli di Napoli (1503–1707) (Rome: Newton Compton, 1996). 20 Spinola told the viceroy about the matter: Tommaso De Santis, Historia del tumulto di Napoli (Leiden: Elsevier, 1652), pp. 18–19. The author served in the royal army and dedicated his work to Juan de Austria.

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into this same error. What did this gabella amount to? It amounted to an added cost of some carlini, from five to ten, on fruit, whether fresh or dried, including nuts, as appears in the Istruzioni written out by Carlo Brancaccio, who had the delegazione so that all might know how much they had to pay on every single good. The introduction of the gabella stirred up controversies. Not only did the burden itself cause suffering and provoke resentment, but so did how it was collected, very harshly, hitting the people who most needed small gains just to get by. New officers appeared at the market and elsewhere, near the “houses” set up for the exaction. Some were assigned to see that nobody escaped the gabellieri by carrying contraband. Among these officials was one Ametrano. He did not confine himself to denouncing smugglers. He also “committed in the city, under the colour of this duty, with a brigade of armed men, such strange extortions, and frequent petty thefts, that prudent people thought that so much patience, in the long run, would doubtless turn into fury.”21 On the subject of those officials, dottore Simonetta relates as follows: The guardians, and spies, who worked in the exaction of the said Gabella were those who most offended the citizens, because, if a poor fellow wanted to take home, from out of town, a little basket with two rotoli [under two kilos] of fruit, he was fined if it was secret and they found out later. If he carried it out in the open and he lacked the money to pay the gabella, either he threw the fruit away or he ate it, because there were so many spies and guardians.22

Giuseppe Pollio also spoke out against these officials: “the hatred of the people was against the officers of the said gabella, who, like so many tigers, wanted to enslave human blood. If a patrician wanted to bring a little basket 21 Information about these meetings and discussion about them come from, inter alia, Camillo Tutini and Marino Verde, Racconto, pp. 8–10. While there remain doubts about the identity of Marino Verde, Camillo Tutini, author of the final revision of the chronicle, finished by 1653, treats him as a noted figure. See Messina’s thorough introduction to the Racconto. Tutini had much influence on the discussion of the imbalances in the city’s institutions, with his treatise Dell’origine e fundation de’ seggi (Naples: O. Beltrano, 1644); Galasso, “Una ipotesi di blocco storico oligarchico-borghse nella Napoli del ‘600. I Seggi di Camillo Tutini fra politica e storiografia,” in Rivista storica italiana, XC (1978): 507–530. 22 Tarquinio Simonetta, Historia delle rivoluzioni di Napoli dell’anno 1647 scritta dal Dottor T. S. Napoletano, Naples, BNN, XV E 49, f. 6r. The doctor in Law was attached to the regent, Ettore Capecelatro (f. 39r), and he called himself an eyewitnes (f. 69v).

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of fruit or lemons from his lands, or in by boat, it would have been better he were hanged.”23 If the gabella were not paid, one risked prison. One account states: “some among the people who cheated the gabelle and the taxes suffered long stints in prison, and money fines, and many were condemned to row the galleys.”24 Following the introduction of the gabella sulla frutta, people began to curse, and to protest in public against the Eletto of the People. Alongside the swearing were other shows of discontent. When the viceroy went in his carriage to mass at the Carmine, by the market square, the “barefoot folk” of the lower quarters stopped him, to beseech or tell him to abolish it. The viceroy said that he would do so, and then, after one last violent episode, on 26 December, he decided to go no longer to the Carmine, but to take mass instead from the Jesuits, at Via Toledo, near his palace. Then, rather than abolish the gabella, the viceroy chose to wait: the people of Naples, they told him, were an “animal to thrash with sticks”; they would soon become used to paying up. Instead, the “discontent” grew ever stronger. In the first months of the new year, there were rumours of unusual exchanges between the plebs and the “civil people,” more prosperous commoners above them. Then, someone began to fan the flames. In May, near the seggi and in other places, there appeared cartelli (placards) threatening revolution. Not only that: they cited the city of Palermo, that recently had risen against its gabelle (20 May), and they used the words proffered by Jesus at the Last Supper: “For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you.”25 Other placards threatened the viceroy himself: 23 Giuseppe Pollio, Historia del Regno di Napoli, f. 11v. Fuidoro, Successi historici, p. 89, writes of Pollio as one of the friars who, after Masaniello’s death, made requests favouring the clergy. 24 Tizio Della Moneca, Istoria delle revoluzioni di Napoli dell’anno 1647 del Dottor T. della M., all’Altezza Serenissima del Invitissimo Arciduca Leopoldo d’Austria, ff. 349, Naples, SNSP, XXVII C 11, f. 21r. As for his motive, the doctor of law explains: “Urged by many frieds to give a report of the uprisings and tumults of this city of Naples, and to satisfy and do my duty, I began with a brief account of the beginning of such a commotion.” Some of the first pages appear in Mondo antico in rivolta (Napoli 1647–’48), edited by Aurelio Musi and Saverio Di Franco (Manduria-Bari-Rome: Lacaita, 2006), pp. 109–119. 25 John 13: 13–15 for the words of Christ. The placard appears in Capecelatro, Diario, vol. I, p. 26, n. XII, edited by Angelo Granito. On 21 May, the viceroy at Palermo had abolished the gabelle on flour, wine, oil, meat, and cheese. The revolt continued and in August was led by Giuseppe d’Alesi, who re-aff irmed loyalty to the Spanish government; on 22 August, he was killed, along with the revolt’s other leaders; see Francesco Benigno, “Fora gabelle e malo governo. Riflessioni sulla rivolta di Palermo del 1647–48,” in Antonio Lerra and Aurelio Musi, eds., Rivolte e Rivoluzione nel Mezzogiorno d’Italia. 1547–1799 (Manduria: Lacaita, 2008), p. 198, now also in Benigno, Favoriti e ribelli. Stili della politica barocca (Rome: Bulzoni, 2011), pp. 167–191; and the

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Your tyrannical way of dealing will not go on much longer, believe me, Oh Viceroy. From such a dignity, you have today come down to relieve your horse of so great a weight. Under his regime, he takes blood. But his death will purge it with blood. The Prince of the Council today is the Exarch [esarco: the archbishop] so that your Arco [arch, a play on Arcos] will be broken.26

The Duke of Arcos was a tyrant. There was talk of blood, of an “arco” that should be broken. According to Capecelatro, the author of those placards was a Roman by origin, Luigi del Ferro. He was linked to an apostate friar, Andrea Paolucci, who had been sent by Tommaso di Savoia, the prince then fighting for the French, and by Mazarin, both of whom had designs on the Kingdom of Naples. They were not the only ones pushing for a rupture with Madrid. Friar Paolucci himself, once captured, declared that the Duke of Maddaloni, Diomede Carafa, was among the plotters against the Spanish government.27 Paolucci’s words confirmed what the Duke of Arcos already suspected. When the revolt broke out, Maddaloni was in prison. He was blamed for a grave attentat, the explosion of a ship, the Ammiraglio, on 12 May, as it lay anchored in the port of Naples.28 When the ship blew up, the Duke of Arcos suspected the nobles, given the tensions between them and him, or the amount of gunpowder used, something the plebs did not possess in plenty. Moreover, in some circles it was said that certain nobles were campaigning to pry the kingdom from Spain’s hand. From the manuscript chronicle now at the Biblioteca Casanatense in Rome, we learn interesting, relevant details. We read there recent, dense synthesis by Daniele Palermo, “Un viceré e la crisi. Il marchese di Los Veles nella rivolta palermitana del 1647,” Librosdelacorte.es, nº 4, año 4 (invierno-primavera, 2012): 126–140. 26 Tomo III. Delle Revolutioni di Napoli, f. 17v. The author is unknown, but at the margin of the account of the death of the “pilgrim of Gio.Angelo,” (f. 146r) one reads that the author is Giraffi, the noted author of Le rivolutioni di Napoli. Tomo III. The section entitled Delle Revolutioni di Napoli came after two others: Vatican City, BAV, Urb. Lat. 1746: Tomo i: Vita di Masaniello; and BAV, Urb. Lat. 1747: Tomo ii. Di Relationi diverse di Giustitie fatte in Napoli. 27 Fuidoro, Successi historici, p. 229; Capecelatro, Diario, p. 7; Villari, Un sogno di libertà, pp. 426–427. 28 Anon., Sollevatione dell’anno 1647, ms. SNSP, XXII C 6, f. 91r.

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that the Duke of Maddaloni was plotting harm to Spain with the Prince of Gallicano, Pompeo Colonna, who was imprisoned in Naples at Castel Sant’Elmo. They had decided that on 25 July, the day of Saint James, with the guards’ complicity, they would leave the castle shouting “Viva Francia.” When, however, on 7 July, the plotters heard that the people had risen, and were shouting “Viva Spagna,” they gave up their plan.29 This rumour suggests that the discontent had united social classes hitherto far apart, and that Spanish dominion was at risk. As we shall see, the Masaniello days played a major role in the entire contest for power because, among other reasons, they made for politics very advantageous to the viceroy in his struggle with the knights. One person who was certain that, rather than push to break with Spain, it was wiser to reshape the nobles’ power, was Giulio Genoino, a man then past eighty. Of humble birth, he had taken a degree in law in 1588. The dottore had aroused considerable public interest in the time of Viceroy Osuna. Indeed, he had been several times, albeit briefly, Eletto del Popolo but, above all, he had tried to foster a new political-institutional arrangement, to guarantee the people the same number of votes as the nobles.30 The reaction of both the nobles and Madrid was strong; it undid also Osuna. The viceroy was replaced by Cardinal Borgia, and Genoino and Francesco Antonio Arpaia, whom the dottore himself had chosen as captain of the Market, were forced to leave the Kingdom. At the end of a trial, concluded, for the times, in speedy fashion, Genoino was sentenced to life imprisonment and Arpaia received ten years at the galley oars. On 4 May 1622, both left the Kingdom. Genoino was taken to the island fortress of Peñón de la Vélez, 29 Casanatense Anonymous, Narrazione della rivolta, ff. 83r–85v. But also Tutini-Verde, Racconto della sollevatione, p. 101. Some information on the anti-noble plots appears in Villari, La rivolta antispagnola a Napoli, p. 211; Francesco Andreu, “I Teatini e la rivoluzione nel Regno di Napoli,” Regnum Dei, xxx (1974): 221–396, p. 325; Musi, La rivolta di Masaniello, pp. 217 ff.; Benigno, Specchi della rivoluzione, pp. 256 ff. 30 Genoino, “di onorata famiglia napoletana, ed uomo di acutissimo ingegno,” was elected Proeletto on 9 April 1610 pro-interim (replacing Grimaldi, who went as ambassador to Spain). Francesco Antonio Arpaia was named as capitano. The first period ended on 17 July 1619, when irregularities in the appointment were noted. The Duke of Osuna did not give up on the project of reinforcing popular representation. When the new Eletto died, on 6 April, Genoino was elected and he remained in office until the new viceroy, Cardinal Borgia, who had been ambassador in Rome, arrived. Behind this arrival there lay a campaign to block the reforms desired by Genoino and Osuna: Villari, Un sogno di libertà, p. 127; Nicola Napolitano, Masaniello e Giulio Genoino. Mito e coscienza di una rivolta (Naples: Fiorentino, 1960). We have several of Genoino’s published writings, the last of which is his Memoriale dal carcere al re di Spagna, edited by Rosario Villari (Florence: Olschki, 2012) on his attempt at reform in 1620.

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off the Moroccan coast, staying there until he had finished his sentence. By 1638, he was domiciled in Rome.31 Years later, the nobles had still not forgotten Genoino. It is thought that the Duke of Caivano fought hard to block his readmission to the Neapolitan collegio of dottori. Nevertheless, Genoino still possessed some backing. Notwithstanding his misadventures and sojourns far from home, he clearly still knew how to work to improve both state and people. This is evident in the “papers” that he sent to Cornelio Spinola, back when Medina ruled, which pointed out flaws in the running of the flour customs office (the Dogana della Farina), and volunteered to run the silk dye-works.32 We do not know exactly when Genoino began to push the people to rebel. According to dottore Tizio Della Moneca, another chronicler who witnessed the revolt, some months before it broke out Genoino spoke with the captains of some of the ottine, laying out the “gabelle, burdens, and miseries in which the people and the kingdom found themselves” with an eye to prod them into furore, and to the enterprise, to the point that, with a lot of loose discipline and lax oversight in the city, these preachers multiplied, and went on stirring up one another, and they showed the reasons and causes that moved people to remove the yoke upon them, and the power, dominion, and authority of the knights, and of the titled, and other noble persons, whose custom it was often to maltreat the lower and middling people, and the [lowly] vassals, merchants and others, to the point of natural death.33

Other chronicles also stress Genoino’s role as a “preacher.” Some sources suggest that he had long been waiting for his chance to take revenge upon 31 Some details about Genoino’s life can be found in Memorie di alcuni capitani e ministri nominati nella presente Istoria, in Degl’Avvenimenti più memorabili accaduti in Napoli nel tempo delle Sollevazioni Popolari degl’Anni 1647, e ’48. Con altra breve continuazione di tutto ciò accadde più memorabile da detto tempo per tutto l’Anno 1656 trascritti da G.B.G. libro III, Naples, BNN, XV G 28; see also Musi, La rivolta di Masaniello, p. 84; Eugenio Di Rienzo, “Genoino, Giulio,” in DBI (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana), vol. 53, 1999, pp. 140–143; Pier Luigi Rovito, Il viceregno spagnolo di Napoli (Naples: Arte Tipografica, 2003), pp. 256 ff.; Giuseppe Galasso, “Il regno di Filippo III. L’esperienza autoritaria dell’Osuna,” in Storia d’Italia, vol. IV/2 (2005), pp. 980–1050; Villari, Un sogno di libertà, pp. 444–453. 32 The first “paper” is remarked on in Spinola at f. 411r of the manuscript: Naples, BNN, XI E 31. The second, proposing a dyers’ monopoly, which Spinola thought well of, has been published as an appendix to Chapter II in Schipa, La mente di Masaniello; see also Musi, “Il console genovese a Napoli Cornelio Spinola (1621–1648) e i problemi di economia e di finanze nel Seicento mediterraneo,” Archivio storico per le province napoletane, CXII (2004): 167–183. 33 Della Moneca, Istoria delle revoluzioni, f. 20v.

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the nobles. The discontent stirred up by the introduction of the gabella on fruit, said some witnesses, seemed an excellent occasion for him to realize his own desires. See the words of another chronicler, Tommaso De Santis, a high officer in the royal army: He [Genoino] lived meanwhile, under feigned fealty, malcontented, and had almost cancelled his misdeed from the ministers’ memory, so that, now that he understood, with the imposition of this new tax, the good, and the bad affections of the subjects, and with the king’s forces having been sent off in so many directions, he judged that the ball had bounced into his hand, and that the time had come to carry out his vendettas. Therefore, seeing how the people was forgetting the very name of subject, and losing belief in the fatherland, he removed his mask, and, shamelessly prostrating himself, kissed the ground, and, with hands folded thanked heaven, that after long travails and danger of death, it had allowed him to return safely and to see this day.34

If the dottore likely wished revenge, he was also undoubtedly devoted to his project, to give the people the same political power as the nobles; in the months after the gabella came in, he won converts. But how did Genoino and Masaniello come to know one another? We lack a precise account. In their history, Camillo Tutini and Marino Verde write: When he found out that Masaniello had been made the head of that burlesque company (of which we shall speak), before the festival of the Carmine took place [16 July], the two of them spoke alone together on many days in the church of the Carminello, of the Jesuits in the market, and they were observed several times by various people. What they said one could not learn, but one can argue from what Genoino was in the habit of saying – that to repair Naples all one needed was blood and fire. And so Masaniello carried it out, as we shall tell.35

Capecelatro affirms that both Genoino and Masaniello had been mishandled by the Duke of Maddaloni, but omits to say when. This episode, he says, caused the two to “make a tumult.” He then adds that a priest had told him that Genoino had alerted Masaniello to the chance of goodly profit. As nobody else speaks of such a thing, Capecelatro, a knight, likely wished to 34 De Santis, Historia del tumulto, pp. 35–37. 35 Tutini-Verde, Racconto della sollevatione, p. 15.

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belittle the dottore and to make Masaniello seem his mere “arm.”36 The passage richest in information about this connection comes from the chronicle at the Casanatense. There, the dottore, seeing that Masaniello’s authority had grown, and desiring to play a role at the head of the revolt, had himself summoned by Masaniello, the young captain of the Alarbi. He worked through his friend Arpaia, who was well known at the market. “Arpaia, likewise, who had little affection for the knights, arranged that Masaniello had that Giulio summoned. He, a perfect fox, did not want to go the first time he was called, but worked it out with Arpaia for the second [summons], but wanted things done with violence, and had his way.”37 INSTRUCTIONS38 For the exaction of the gabella of fruit, taken by this Most Faithful City of Naples in conformity with the conclusions of the Illustrious Deputies of the Illustrious Piazzas of this Most Faithful City. On the fruits that are commonly sold by cantaro [= 100 rotoli] and by rotolo from the first of May of every year, down through the whole month of October, 5 carlini per cantaro, and from the first of November to the end of April, 10 carlini per cantaro. [1 cantaro = ca. 90 kilos].

36 Capecelatro, Diario, pp. 15–16. 37 Casanatense Anonymous, Narrazione della rivolta, f. 28r. 38 Where did these “instructions” come from? Tutini and Verde explain that the Spaniards had raised the dazi by two tornesi per rotolo, a dry measure. They then note that, for the gabella on fruit, “Carlo Brancaccio was the general commissioner, and, as he was a gentleman of good heart [di bona mente] and fairly friendly to the poor, to avoid the disorders that could arise in its exaction, he put out the following order to be obeyed.” See their Racconto, pp. 9–10. To understand the gravity of the tax, which fell on many comestible goods, it helps to work with information about Neapolitan coinage and weights and measures, in Nino Leone, La vita quotidiana a Napoli ai tempi di Masaniello (Milan: BUR, 1994), pp. 139–142, as follows: “In gold, there was the double scudo (or doubloon)” (today, just over seven euros, or six pounds or dollars), the scudo and, in silver, the ducato (today, perhaps two and a half euros or three pounds or dollars) “the mezzo-ducato or cianfrone, the tarì of 20 grana, and the tarì of 15 grana, the carlino [10 = 1 ducato], and finally the three-grana coin, where 10 grana made a carlino. In bronze, there were the pubblica of two grana, the grana of two tornesi, or 12 cavalli, a nine-cavalli coin, a tornese of six cavalli, a tre-cavalli coin and, at very bottom, the cavallo.” For weights: “The tomolo was a unit of dry measure for goods in large quantities, but sometimes it was also used to measure fields, and it corresponded to 55.31 modern litres […] The rotolo was the unit of weight in most common use. It corresponded to our kilogram.” Larger measures were the cantaro piccolo (32 kg) and the cantaro of 100 rotoli (89 kg).

Naples in the Time of Masaniello

On dried fruit, in any season, like raisins, f igs, dried apples, dried pears, dried sorb pears, carobs, excepting almonds, 5 carlini per cantaro. On the melons, both pulp melons and watermelons, for every horse load or mule load, one carlino; for every donkey load, 7 1/2 grani, and for every cart, 5 carlini. On the fruits that they sell by the tomolo [dry measure, ca. 78 cm. cubed], like hazelnuts, walnuts, unripe chestnuts and roasted ones, acorns, cerro oak acorns, 12 grana per tomolo. On green olives, 12 grana per tomolo, and on white [olives] and prepared black [olives], 2 carlini [= 20 grana] per tomolo, and for roast [olives], 24 grana per tomolo On big olives from Spain and other places, that come prepared in langelle [2-handled pots] and small barrels, the tenth [of their value]. On the fruit that is sold by the hundred, that is pine-cones, pomegranates, and quinces, for every ten a tornese [1/2 a grana]. On citrus of every sort, the tenth. We declare that the beans, peas, green beans, artichokes, strawberries, zucche of all kinds, eggplants, garlics, onions, cucumbers, blueberries, capers, legumes and blueberries of any sort to not have to be subject to any sort of gabella payment, but should stay as they are at present. And, beyond this, it is declared that when a person of the city, for his own service and use, will carry or have carried by others green fruits [vegetables] weighing four rotoli or less, he does not have to pay anything. Be it however noted that any boats, carrying more than four sportelle [big baskets] per boatload weighing four rotoli each, and with two animals of the same weight, are not granted free passage, except for the aforesaid number, with the condition that they are going to different persons who live in the city, for their use, and the said use of the said four rotoli is not permitted unless the city-dweller himself take it with him, or his servant, and here we expressly exclude workers in gardens and grocers.

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II. A Job for Masaniello The Revolt Begins Abstract The outbreak of revolt: in the night between June 6 and June 7, the seat of the fruit gabella is burned down. The eletto, Andrea Naclerio kindles it to prompt the viceroy to abolish the tax on fruit. To carry out his plan, he involves Giuseppe Palumbo and perhaps it is Palumbo who then brings in Masaniello, the captain of a festival company of young men. The viceroy does abolish the gabella, but uncertainty about its fate remains. On 7 July, peasants, protesting that they will not pay it further, clash with sbirri [police], drawing in Masaniello and his band of youths, and violence spreads. Keywords: fiscalism, Market, eletto del popolo, Naclerio, Tiberio Carafa

1.

The Fire at the House of the Gabella della frutta

In the night between 6 and 7 June, on the Feast of the Ascension, the house of the fruit gabella was set on fire. The attack was organized by Andrea Naclerio, because he was certain, he said, that this gabella would have caused him to be dragged through the streets of Naples.1 He hoped to alarm the viceroy and the visitatore generale, who oversaw the courts, and force them to abolish it. He worked hard to carry the action off, gathering men he trusted for their abilities, like Giuseppe Palumbo. At the time, Palumbo was in prison, as a witness in a smuggling trial, but Eletto Naclerio convinced the viceroy to free him on the pretext that Palumbo could help calm the plebs at the market, for he had an air of authority thanks to his many kinfolk at the Conceria district and his skill with weapons. He had, among other things, taken part in the city’s defence against the French threat in October 1641.2 1 Della Moneca, Istoria delle revoluzioni, f. 6r. 2 Tutini-Verde, Racconto della sollevatione, p. 11.

D’Alessio, S. Masaniello. The Life and Afterlife of a Neapolitan Revolutionary Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2022 doi: 10.5117/9789463721455_ch02

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Perhaps Palumbo then drew in others: Giuseppe Fattorusso, Miccaro Perrone (a bandit chief), Savino Zaccardo (a friar at the Carmine convent), and Masaniello himself.3 On the participation of Masaniello, the revolt’s future head, we have evidence from the chronicler Tommaso De Fiore. To his mind, Masaniello himself had later claimed responsibility for the fire on the revolt’s first day. Climbing onto a workbench, he is said to have exclaimed, “It was I who a few days ago set the fire and made the house of the gabella de’ frutti burn. Let’s go in good cheer and do the same thing to all the other places assigned to levying every other datio and gabella; now is the time to shake off the yoke.”4 We lack precise information about Masaniello for the days that follow. What we do learn from the chronicles suggests that his determination grew into willingness to play a major part in a revolt aiming to abolish all gabelle. We will see some of that later. Meanwhile, in the city, tensions rose far higher. It became harder to allay the wrangling between the fruit wholesalers (from Pozzuoli) and the retailers (from Naples), about who should pay the gabella. One particular quarrel seemed unlikely ever to end. It concerned the Feast of Corpus Christi, 20 June.5 The ceremony, which used the Selleria district as its “theatre,” required the Eletto del Popolo at a certain point to offer his arm to the viceregina, the viceroy’s consort, and walk with her. But this year the Eletto did not arrive in time to play his part. Into his place stepped a 3 Aniello Della Porta, Causa di stravaganze overo Compendio Istorico delli rumori, e sollevazioni de’ Popoli, successi nella città e Regno di Napoli dal VII Gennaro 1647 sino a Giugno 1655. Opera del Dottor A. della P., divisa in quattro parti. Parte i, in Napoli l’anno del Signore 1647, Naples, BNN, XV F 49, f. 19r. The name of the friar appears in Pier Tommaso Moscarella, Cronistoria del Real Convento del Carmine Maggiore di Napoli scritta dal Reverendo Padre P. T. M. Carmelitano Napoletano Figlio del medesimo convento, Naples, BNN, X AA 2, f. 127r. 4 Tommaso De Fiore, Racconto de Tumulti popolari di Napoli con gli avvenimenti stravaganti commessi sotto Mas’Aniello d’Amalfi dalli 7 di Luglio 1647 sino ad Agosto 1648. Raccolti da Gio. T. de F., SNSP, XXVIII B 16, pp. 270. A nineteenth-century copy, it runs to August 1648. 5 Campanile, Diario di G. C. circa la sollevazione della Plebe di Napoli, f. 2r–v. The feast of San Giovanni was instead abolished that year as, ever since February, revolt had threatened to break out that day. For the holiday, see Giuseppe Galasso, “La festa,” in L’altra Europa. Per un’antropologia storica del Mezzogiorno d’Italia (Milan: Mondadori, 1982), pp. 121–142; Gina Iannella, “Les fêtes de la Saint-Jean à Naples (1581–1632),” in Les fêtes urbaines en Italie à l’époque de la Renaissance, Vérone, Florence, Sienne, Naples, edited by Françoise Decroisette and Michel Plaisance (Paris: Presses Sourbonne Nouvelle, 1993), pp. 131–181; Gabriel Guarino, “Spanish Celebrations in Seventeenth-Century Naples,” Sixteenth Century Journal, XXXVII (2006), no. 1: 25–41; on this feast, idem, “Public Rituals and Festivals in Naples,” in A Companion, pp. 257–279, at p. 263; Ida Mauro, Spazio urbano e rappresentazione dl potere. Le cerimonie della città di Napoli dopo la rivolta di Masaniello (1648–1672) (Naples: FedOA Press, 2019), pp. 332 ff. (with references to the days before the revolt broke out).

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friend of the chronicler Fuidoro. “Luis de Cordova, my friend, gave his arm. I was talking with him, and it was late, and the Eletto was not present for the reception of the vicequeen, a thing that caused surprise, as this was a festivity of the People, and the city, but especially of the People, but anyway the procession was coming to its end in that street, and not even the Eletto could have brought so many minds into accord.”6 This may well be why, the next day, the Duke of Arcos wrote to the seggio of the Capuana, asking it to find an alternative to the gabella on fruit.7 The knights of the seggio took up the matter, but found no solution. Meanwhile, rumours flew about other possible exactions, such as a wine levy, a “stab in the heart” for the lesser people. At the market, countless knots of people were talking about gabelle and, according to the Casanatense Anonymous, who seems to have spent a lot of time those days scouting the low quarters, “from the mouths of everyone came bile.”8 In the days of late June and early July, Masaniello was for sure among those who tried to raise the people. An episode made him furious: his wife was arrested by the officers who served Geronimo Letizia, governor of the flour gabella. She was cradling in her arms, like a new-born baby, a bag of flour on which she had paid no tax. Berardina Pisa was carried off to jail. She stayed eight days, until her husband had her freed; the jailers exacted a hefty bribe. The young man had to sell what few goods he owned: the gear he kept at home and perhaps a pair of woollen trousers. Masaniello swore revenge.9 He gathered with a few age-mates amidst the swamps to the north of town, at the Acqua della Bufola, where there was a spring and a tavern.10 Dottor Simonetta seems well-informed about what happened there: “they had something of a meal and then agreed among themselves to raise the people, and to do away with so many fiscal burdens, which all were bearing on account of the said gabelle, and its administrators, who were worse than the others and so tyrannical. So they agreed to take advantage of the occasion of their gathering, which they had arranged, as they had now done.”11 6 Campanile, Diario di G. C. circa la sollevazione della Plebe di Napoli, f. 2v. 7 For the viceroy’s letter, see Conclusione della Piazza di Capuana per lo stesso negozio, in Capecelatro, Diario, pp. 21–25. 8 Casanatense Anonymous, Narrazione della rivolta, f. 6v. 9 Donzelli, Partenope liberata, pp. 7–8. 10 The place was near Poggioreale, outside the northern walls. There was a spring of “cool good water”: Ottavio Beltrano, Breve descrittione del Regno di Napoli diviso in dodeci Provincie (Naples: Beltrano, 1640), p. 42. 11 Simonetta, Historia delle rivoluzioni di Napoli, f. 13r; Capecelatro, Diario, p. 14.

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In the days that followed, Masaniello busied himself with training his Alarbi, as he was their captain, with an eye to the festa of the Virgin of the Carmine. These Alarbi (a local term for “Arabi”) were a company of 200 to 500 boys, the eldest not yet eighteen, who put on a show at the market for the annual festa of the Madonna of the Carmine, on 16 July. They would clash as two opposing “armies,” – one “Arab,” the other “Christian” – battling for a castle of wood and painted paper. The Christians attacked, and the Arabs defended. These mock-soldiers were armed with canes, replacing pikes and swords. As they fought, they hollered in the supposed manner of “Turks” – “liò” or “li-lo li-lò.”12 Alessandro Giraffi recounts how between the end of June and the month that followed he heard a rhyme recited: Two tornesi, that’s a baiocco, the measure of the oil Thirty-six oncie [roughly two pounds] the loaf of bread. Twenty-two grana the rotolo of cheese Six grana for beef.

These were the proper weights and prices on goods they wanted to impose. Some loyal “Vivas” laid down precisely the limits the protest hoped to set. Viva la Madonna del Carmine Viva il Papa, Viva il Re di Spagna, e la Grassa [the city food office]. e muora, muora il mal governo.13 [Die! Die bad governance!]

The Alarbi were given their canes, as the ritual enjoined, but they would serve the turn from assaulting a pretend castle to attacking the real one.14 After the revolt, the question arose: where had Masaniello found the money for arming his Alarbi? Many spoke of the aforementioned friar of the Carmine, 12 Anonymous, Relatione della sollevatione della città di Napoli per occasione della Gabella de frutti successo a di 7 di luglio nel presente anno 1647, Naples, BNN, B. Branc. II F 7, ff. 33r–87r. This manuscript chronicle contains various passages that appear again in Giraffi, Le rivolutioni di Napoli. On this, see D’Alessio “Una nuova aurora. Su un manoscritto di Alessandro Giraffi,” Il Pensiero Politico, XXXII (2000), fasc. 3: 383–402. In this Relatione there appears the most detailed description of this festive company, in some ways similar to others found in Italy. For that, see Carlo Ginzburg, “Charivari, associazioni giovanili, caccia selvaggia,” Quaderni storici, 49 (1982): 164–177. For the shout, “alla turca,” see Anon., Relatione della sollevatione seguita in Napoli alli 7 Luglio 1647 sino alla morte di Tommaso Aniello, BAV, Chigi G VII 210, ff. 47r–62r: f. 59r. 13 For the consolidation of this cult of the Virgin as part of the city’s identity, see Burke, “The Virgin of the Carmine.” 14 Donzelli, Partenope liberata, p. 8.

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Savino Zaccardo. Some said that he had lent twenty carlini.15 But that may have not sufficed to buy the canes. A chronicle says that on the morning of 7 July, the day the revolt broke out, Masaniello went off to the Piazza del Mercato, near the Carmine, saying that he wanted to attack that pretend castle, but it turns out that he had foreseen the budding tumult, because, when he did not reach a settlement with the person who sold him the canes, on account of some disagreement, he told him, “within a few hours I will show you what I am capable of.” He met no resistance, as people thought that he was joking and in fun.16

The seventh of July was both a Sunday and the festa of a chapel of Santa Maria delle Grazie. There were many people at the market. Peasants and shopkeepers had gathered for the usual selling and buying. Not far off were the Alarbi. The two groups soon began to talk together about how nobody wanted to pay the gabella. The Casanatense Anonymous asserts that the shopkeepers had made a pact that they would not back off.17 Lasting several hours, the argument drew the attention of many people from the market and its nearby quarters. Dottore Della Moneca relates how, from his “pleasant vineyard,” he heard “the racket of the people, with shouts and yells, in excess.” Let us hear his account: Not knowing what it might be, I mulled on it, and I feared the grave accidents that can occur in this city on account of the heavy impositions, gabelle, dazi, levies and other things, that oppress this lovely city of ours, and in particular the latest gabella imposed on fruits, very hated by the people. I thought this all the more, as a month ago in the middle of the market the house where they levied the duty was burned at night.

So, Della Moneca went to see what was happening. He soon ran into a group of vaticali – food conveyancers – from Pozzuoli heading to the Borgo dei Vergini, where the Eletto del Popolo lived. In the end, they returned to the 15 For the loan of 20 carlini, Donzelli, Partenope liberata, p. 8; Pollio, Historia del Regno di Napoli, f. 13 also mentions it, as do Della Porta, Causa di stravaganze, f. 22r, and others. 16 Campanile, Diario di G. C. circa la sollevazione della Plebe di Napoli, f. 5r. 17 Casanatense Anonymous, Narrazione della rivolta, f. 7r. Donzelli and other sources explain why the peasants did not want to pay: the tax was as high as the price of the fruit and also they knew that the viceroy wanted to abolish the tax; at that moment, he was looking for other sources of income. Idem, Partenope liberata, p. 9.

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market, shouting, “we don’t want to pay more gabella de frutti.”18 At the market, the dottore found around 1500 fruit containers on the ground and hundreds of peasants and shopkeepers talking together. When the Eletto del popolo arrived, he ordered the consoli of the guild to distribute the containers to the shopkeepers and to assign the gabella to the peasants. He would pay the tax in advance and try to work things out among them. The ambiguous decision drove the peasants to fury, one especially. “Are you trying to go to the galleys with your hands tied behind you?” the Eletto asked, threatening him. The fellow answered, “I am a man of honour, and I am master of my property” and threw a fruit container to the ground. The boys with Masaniello came running to gather the fruit, and began to eat it. Then they started to throw it “in the face of the Eletto del Popolo, in whose company were Don Antonio Barbaro, Captain of Justice, with policemen, Peppe Palumbo, a man of the Conceria quarter, with four others. They pointed to the boyish plebians, saying, ‘Signor Eletto, let’s get away from trouble,’ and they [the officials] retired into the Conceria.” From there, the Eletto managed to reach the port, boarded a boat, and rejoined the viceroy at the palace.19 Giuseppe Pollio’s version differs little; he, too, was at the market, near the Eletto del Popolo. The Eletto gave orders not to exact the gabella in advance, and to write down the fruits, both the sellers and the buyers doing so, so that they could soon come to a resolution. People answered him, ‘What is the use of writing it down? This is a way to go back to paying the gabella. Wait for what we tell you. Otherwise we will throw them [the goods] away.’ At that point Capitano Barbaro intervened. He tried to intimidate the peasants and the fruit-sellers, but in vain. Instead, a particularly angry fellow dumped a bin of fruit on the ground.

Many peasants and women rushed to pick up the spilled fruit. Pollio also reports that Masaniello’s Alarbi joined in at once, and started throwing – first fruit, then stones. That put the Eletto and those with him in a tight spot; in the end, they fled to save themselves. Once back at the palace, the Eletto told the viceroy what had happened. The viceroy then asked Tiberio Carafa, prince of Bisignano, to intervene.20 18 The transportation workers did not find the Eletto because he had gone to dinner at Posillipo with other knights of the Capuana seggio. For this, see Capecalatro, Diario, p. 18. 19 Della Moneca, Istoria delle revoluzioni, 15v. 20 Pollio, Historia del Regno di Napoli, f. 13v.

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The two chroniclers, Della Moneca and Pollio, ignore Masaniello. From other sources, however, we know that the peasant from Pozzuoli, who defied the Eletto, was a brother-in-law of his, and that it was Masaniello who had urged the boys to throw first fruit and then stones at the Eletto. Alessandro Giraffi, cited above, recalls, “there was among those folk from Pozzuoli a brother-in-law of Masaniello, who, in line with instructions had from him, began to make a great ruckus, more than the others, to irritate the plebs.”21 According to Della Porta, this in-law was named Mase Carrese.22 But the only brother-in-law of Masaniello whom we can trace did not bear that name. He was called Cesare di Roma. He had married Grazia Francesca D’Amalfi, Masaniello’s sister, on 27 January 1641; this fact appears amidst the records of baptisms and marriages of members of Masaniello’s family in the registers of the church of Santa Caterina, found by the scholars Vincenzo Cuomo and Emmanuele Palermo.23 From those documents we learn that, to all appearances, Masaniello had but one sister. Nevertheless, he might have had others, as his mother was a prostitute – we shall return to this. The members of his family of whom we have a trace are called “d’Amalfi,” as children of Francesco d’Amalfi, father of Tommaso Aniello (Masaniello): so, perhaps Masaniello had other sisters and more than one brother-in-law. Giraffi himself speaks of several sisters; in a passage in his chronicle so brief that it has gone unremarked, he asserts: “there went [to the palace, on Sunday 14 July] the wife, the mother, the sisters and other kinfolk of Masaniello, daughters of workers of the fish market.”24 Brother-in-law or not, the important thing, easily aligned with the other reports just noted, is that Masaniello instructed this fellow, urging him to refuse to pay the gabella. A bit further on, Giraffi tells how Masaniello went to burn the house where they 21 Giraff i, Le rivolutioni di Napoli, p. 18; See also Anon., Relatione mandata 92 86 [sic] della grandissima rivolta di Napoli et altre città del regno. Di Napoli 11 luglio 1647, in Relazioni da Napoli sulla rivolta del 1647; note estratte dall’Archivio di Stato di Firenze. Carte strozziane, Naples, SNSP, XXVII A 13, ff. 45–51, at f. 45r. 22 Della Porta, Causa di stravaganze, f. 21r. 23 The text of the marriage document for Masaniello’s sister: “A 27 Gennaio del 1641 precedenti le tre debite denunzie ne’ tre giorni festivi consecutivi, 6, 13, 17 gennaio 1641, inter missae parrocchialis solemnia, et non essendo scoperto alcun impedimento, io Abbate Giovan Matteo Peta, parroco, ho interrogato in chiesa Cesare di Roma, di Gragnano, e Grazia d’Amalfi napoletana, ambi non ancora casati, habitanti al Vico Rotto al Lavinaio, et havuto il lor mutuo assenso secondo la forma del S.C.T., con decreto di Monsignor Vicario Generale, l’ho solennemente riuniti in matrimonio per verba de presenti, et vi furono presenti Thommaso Aniello d’Amalfi, napolitano, figlio di Francesco di questa parrocchia, Giuseppe Giannattasio, napoletano, figlio di Raimondo, di questa parrocchia, clerico Andrea Catone et altri.” (Reg. cit., Lib. vii dei Matrimoni, f. 3 n. 18). This avowal was reported by Capasso, Masaniello, p. 87. 24 Giraffi, Le rivolutioni di Napoli, p. 172.

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collected the gabella on fruit, which the viceroy had had rebuilt. And then he climbed upon a stall and, according to the chronicler, spoke as follows: Be of good spirits, dear companions, and brothers. Render thanks to God, and to the glorious Virgin of the Carmine, for the hour, now arrived, of your rescue. This poor barefoot fellow, as a new Moses, who rescued the people of Israel from the pharaoh’s whip, will also redeem you from the tyranny of the gabelle which have already been imposed for some while, and from the greed of others since eternity. One fisherman, who was Peter, with his voice called Rome back from servitude to Satan to the liberty of Christ, and, with Rome, [Peter called] the world. And another fisherman, who is Masaniello, will transfer Naples from the rigorous exaction of so many taxes to full enjoyment of the old food regime, and with Naples, the Kingdom.25

The Casanatense Anonymous is much more detailed and plausible as to what happened in these moments. He, too, affirms that it was Masaniello who urged the youths to use stones: “Turn around, take stones, and I will help you.”26 Then, he adds: “he called a fellow, Gioseppe de Simone, and they went together to set fire to the house where they collected the gabella on fruit.” The anonymous chronicler knew that Gioseppe was a worker who transported charcoal, “born at the Lavinaio, living near Masaniello, of the same age as he.”27 We have no precise notice of the young man from other sources, but Fuidoro seems to allude to him: “his alfiere [corporal] was a porter called Gioseppe […] (who later was captured in a sortie towards Castellammare [at the Bay’s southeast corner] and put in a galley, where he died before the beginning of this war).”28 Fuidoro’s ellipsis suggests that he had either forgotten or never known this man’s last name. This is likely 25 Ibid., pp. 19–20. This speech of Masaniello’s did not seem altogether improbable to Genoveffa Palumbo, who has stressed the wide diffusion of certain topoi: “Ut pictura istoria. La rivolta napoletana del 1647–’48. Le rappresentazioni figurate e antica storiografia,” Atti dell’Accademia pontaniana, n.s., XIV, 1996 (1997): 115–142; he finds traces of similar language in Anon., Storia di Masaniello, Naples, BNN, X D 101, ff. 75 at f. 7v: “cominciò ad inserirli nell’animo che accudissero a lui.” 26 Casanatense Anonymous, Narrazione della rivolta, f. 10r. This move to throwing stones is recorded in many chronicles, like that of De Santis, Historia del tumulto, p. 43. 27 Casanatense Anonymous continues to seem very well informed, as if he were a person who tried every way of collecting information. His profile is similar to that of the ambassadors of whom Alain Hugon speaks in his Au service du roi catholique. «Honorables ambassadeurs» et «Divins Espions». Représentation diplomatique et service secret dans le relations Hispano-Françaises de 1598 à 1635 (Madrid: Casa de Velàsquez, 2004). 28 Fuidoro, Successi historici, p. 48. The war in question was the current struggle between France and Spain to hold Naples.

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the De Simone who, the Anonymous writes, had been elected as alfiere, and he must have ended tragically before the beginning of the war with the Spaniards, i.e. before August 1647, as we have no later traces of him, while we do see mention of other followers of Masaniello, such as Scipione Giannattasio, alias Pione.29 Once the gabella-payment house was razed, Masaniello served as chief in the hours that followed. One reads in tales of the revolt that, just after the uprising began, Prince Tiberio Carafa arrived at the market, with his nephew and other knights, to calm the heated spirits. When they first saw them, issuing from their houses the men and women of the lower quarters ran up in welcome. Tiberio Carafa was famous for defending the city from the fleet of the bishop of Bordeaux, which, in October 1641, had threatened the coast. He was also beloved for his generosity – it was said that every day he gave food to thirteen paupers – and for his courteous ways, rare in the Neapolitan nobility.30 The Reverend Pollio, who followed Carafa, reports that so many people crowded around that he found it hard to enter the church. When Carafa arrived at the pulpit, he fainted due to fatigue and the heat. The Reverend Pollio caught up with him in the sacristy, where, he reports, he gave the prince a little water to refresh him. Meanwhile, Carafa’s nephew asked the people to calm down, saying that remedy for everything would soon be found, and asked them to pray for his uncle’s health. The account of the Casanatense Anonymous helps link these reports with others. Spying the prince, Masaniello approached him and to his reassuring words replied: “I don’t just want that His Excellency [the viceroy] remove the gabella of fruit, but I also want him to remove all the gabelle in this city and kingdom because they could no longer bear them, so heavy were they.” Here is more of the Anonymous’s chronicle, very likely based on direct experience: Signor Don Tiberio answered, saying, “Dear son, the order I have from His Excellency [the viceroy] is to advise him only about the gabella of fruit, but, do me a favour: take this good will of His Excellency from me, that I will be a good advocate with him, to have the others removed as you desire.” Masaniello replied that he should remove them now. During this parley Don Tiberio was having, he [Masaniello] arrived at the Carmine with Ettore Ravaschieri prince of Satriano, [member] of the Council of State, 29 The Count de Modène considered Pione to be the captain of the Alarbi, from the first days of the revolt, but he is projecting backwards from later events: Modène, Mémoires. Pione was imprisoned on 13 September. See Tutini-Verde, Racconto della sollevatione, p. 166. 30 Carla Russo, “Carafa, Tiberio,” DBI, vol. 19, 1976, pp. 604–606.

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knight of the Golden Fleece, with the maestro di Campo Don Diomede Carrafa, nephew of the said Don Tiberio, who offered the same thing that the said Don Tiberio had offered a little earlier. Again, Masaniello answered to these lords the same thing that a little earlier he had replied to the said Don Tiberio, that he wanted them to remove all the gabelle.31

The prince tried again to convince him, with what forces he could summon, but Masaniello answered, “with a rough expression”: “No need to bother yourself. I myself will go to His Excellency.” The Anonymous’s story seems credible not only because it matches others for this scene, but also because it is plausible that Masaniello, who had already burned down the fruit gabella house and led the Alarbi against the Eletto, indeed sought a direct dialogue with the prince. What one reads next is interesting and striking. After having spoken with the prince, Masaniello called his trusted friend Gioseppe and said (here the Anonymous continues to employ direct discourse): “Smash all the houses where they collect the gabella on fruit and come from there straightaway to the palace, and we will meet up there.” And he called the boys with the canes, telling them to go with him. The said Don Tiberio again begged him not to go so far, as he was going to speak to His Excellency, and he would make him abolish all the gabelle, just as this Masaniello desired. The said Masaniello replied that he himself wanted to go there. In the meantime, an infinite number of barefoot folk showed up, from Mercato, Conceria, and Lavinaio. When those lords had left, and when Gioseppe de Simone had gone off with about eighty youngsters, Masaniello, with an infinite group of other beardless youths at the market, lads from the Conceria and the Lavinaio, headed for the palace, and along the route more young men kept joining. The arms they carried were only canes, stones, and left-over pieces of wood taken from the gabella buildings. And as they went they kept shouting, “Viva the king of Spain, death to bad governance, and away with the gabelle.”

2.

Black Bread

Another witness reports: “He went with those lads armed with canes, some two hundred in number, towards the palace, and, passing first through the wine 31 Casanatense Anonymous, Narrazione della rivolta, f. 13r.

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port, they burned there a post of the wine gabella called ‘A ducat a barrel,’ and nobody put up any resistance to him. The sight of those youngsters with the canes on their shoulders, the shouts, and the noise caused in all great amazement and eagerness, and the violence provoked much wonder in everyone.”32 The viceroy had been trying to calm the young men, throwing from a palace balcony some “tickets,” declaring that he had abolished “the burdens,” but this dialogue broke off when Masaniello and the Alarbi arrived. More determined than anyone else, they broke through the guard of Spaniards and Swiss and went into the palace. They opened the big windows and started tossing down furnishings, curtains, and the very window frames. The Genoese resident, Ottaviano Sauli, who happened to be at the palace, later told Marquis Spinola, in Genoa: “The shouts and shrilling that we heard in that palace are both unimaginable, and impossible to describe. Some tried to use force with this crowd, and it was in vain even to think of it. And whoever tried to use sweetness just provoked them more, and caused them to increase the damage and wanton actions.”33 According to Della Moneca’s account, one of the principal figures targeted was the Eletto del popolo. The Eletto made the mistake of coming out of the quarters of the viceregina, but retreated back indoors, after a warning from the Prince of Bisignano: “My Andrea, save yourself, for they are looking for you. And at once some of them turned up, saying ‘Dog, traitor, we are looking for you!’”34 According to several witnesses, Masaniello was brandishing the bread currently available in the city, “small and of low quality,” and shouting that “for once and all they should put an end to the burning thirst to suck the blood of the poor.”35 To any mediators, the plebs said that they wanted to 32 Anon., Relatione della sollevatione della città di Napoli dell’anno 1647, f. 36v. 33 Ottaviano Sauli, Copia di lettera del M[aest]ro di campo O. S.; all’Ecc.mo Sr. Marchese Spinola, A Genova, BAV, Barb. Lat. 3210 (XL 7), ff. 410, at ff. 227–255, published in Luigi Correra, Archivio storico per le Province Napoletane, XV (1890) 1: 355–385, at p. 357. The Genoese resident, who had been in Naples for years, had a number of problems thanks to the uprising. On 3 September, he would petition the viceroy to let him depart with the Genoa galleys, “having lost here all that he possessed, which was 1600 ducats in rent,” ASN, Segreterie dei Viceré, busta 128, folio 54. On the beginning of the revolt, see the account published in Jean-Luc-Nardone, “La Révolution de Naples. Les dix jours de Masaniello (1647). Suivi de l’édition critique d’un manuscript inédit de la Bibliothèque universitaire de Bologne,” Cahiers d’études romanes, 35, (2017): 279–307. 34 Anon., Succinta Relatione della sollevatione di Napoli, f. 67v. In other accounts it appears that bread was exhibited. See Donzelli, Partenope liberata, p. 11; Capecelatro, Diario, p. 21; Simonetta, Historia delle rivoluzioni di Napoli, f. 24r. 35 A series of voted resolutions presented “to Charles V” appear in Francesco Imperato, Privilegi, capituli, e Gratie, concesse al fedelissimo populo Napolitano, & alla sua piazza. Con le sue annotationi di nuovo aggiunte. Et il discorso intorno all’officio (Naples: Gio. Domenico Roncagliolo, 1624), 2nd edition, pp. 6–7. The resolution on the parity of votes between nobles and Popolo is the last of seven: “Item supplicano attento, che più volte a loro è stato permesso per molti Re della

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abolish the gabella, or gabelle, or to observe the old privilege of Charles V, so that the nobles would cease sucking the people’s blood. These important fragments prove that some formulations had made the rounds, spreading Genoino’s objectives. As we have said, back when Osuna was viceroy, the dottore had requested equal voting rights for the People and the nobles, by leveraging earlier privileges conceded by the Spanish sovereigns.36 He had also suggested protesting against bad governance and its accomplices (the knights), rather than against the Spanish regime or the “foreigner” (although, in fact, more than one witness speaks of Genoino’s “false f idelity”). His line had taken hold, even if many Neapolitans felt instinctive mistrust of the Spaniard, as surfaces in some accounts, as we shall soon see. Let us turn to what was now afoot. The Duke of Arcos fled down a stairway giving onto a garden, hoping to reach by carriage the nearby convent of San Luigi, by the church of San Francesco da Paola. But passage to the convent was far from easy. Hundreds mobbed the carriage, blocking its progress. According to the Casanatense Anonymous, Masaniello’s friend Gioseppe de Simone attacked the viceroy, “grabbing him by the throat, pulling many hairs from his head, and forcing him to his knee on the ground. At that point, seeing His Excellency in a bad way, he [Masaniello] put his hand in his [the viceroy’s] purse, and grabbed some handfuls of gold pieces, throwing them to the said Gioseppe, who, to take them, let go of his Excellency, whom he was holding by the throat.”37 The viceroy then kept going, on foot. On this walk, surely the longest and most vexatious of his life, he was protected by some Spanish and Italian knights. As Francesco Capecelatro later heard, Carlo Caracciolo, a noble who kept him company, said many times, “‘Make way for the King!’ lest, with the duke’s death, they commit a greater crime.” Not only were Masaniello’s followers threatening the viceroy, but also some clergy. An “apostate friar of Sant’Agostino” grabbed him by the hair: Serenissima casa d’Aragonia, che in giuste occorrenze, prerogative, honori, e preheminentie della detta Città, essi supplicanti habbiano, e debbiano havere tante voci, quanto hanno li Nobili della detta Città e questo quantunque sia di mera Iustitia, lo reputeranno a gratia singolare”; see Galasso, Il Regno di Napoli, pp. 296 ff. Later, there came Privilegi et Capitoli (Venice: Pietro Drusinelli, 1588), conceded in 1505 by Ferdinando el Católico and confirmed by Charles V, which allowed some fiscal exemptions, such as freedom from the gabella on trade goods: Piero Ventura, La capitale dei privilegi, Governo spagnolo, burocrazia e cittadinanza a Napoli nel Cinquecento (Naples: FedOA Press, 2018), p. 89. 36 De Santis, Historia del tumulto, p. 51, writes of someone who struck the carriage with a large knife and notes that, on this occasion, the viceroy was protected by a man who later became captain of the infantry. 37 Casanatense Anonymous, Narrazione della rivolta, f. 15r.

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“he dragged him for a bit, telling him, ‘Remove, remove the gabella!’” The viceroy at last reached the convent. The monks opened the doors for him and swiftly locked them. He was safe.

3.

Abolish the Gabelle

Masaniello and Simone soon came to the convent and banged on the door. The monks “shouted from above that they had no keys, and asked them to show respect, that this was a temple and a house of God, and that they should watch what they were doing. Masaniello and Gioseppe, checked by their reverence for the said church and by the monks’ shouts, refrained from setting it afire, but kept shouting, ‘Viceroy, take those gabelle off us. If not, we will burn alive both you and the palace, with your wife and children’.”38 Then, Cardinal Ascanio Filomarino, the city’s archbishop, arrived on the scene, and began to negotiate with the viceroy, “one of them from inside and the other from outside, via notes, with the lord viceroy inside, to the lord cardinal, to do what the people wanted and remove the gabelle.” The Casanatense Anonymous, whom I cite throughout, says that Masaniello “did not want to believe these words, and told the Lord Cardinal that, if the viceroy was not in his [the cardinal’s] hand, and in that of the people, that he had no trust in him, that he knew very well that the Spaniards did not keep their promises.”39 The cardinal did his utmost to calm Masaniello and the others. So fraught was the moment that he himself invited them to “demolish all the houses, where there were officials collecting the gabelle, and [promised] that in the morning the bread would have greater weight, and be of better quality.”40 Now, who was this cardinal? His family, the Filomarino, belonged to the noble seggio of Capuana. Ascanio Filomarino was born in 1584, at Chianche, in the province of Avellino, and educated in Naples, where in 1607 he took a degree in Law.41 When his father died, he had to support himself and help his several brothers. Opportunity arose when the Bishop of Venafro, Ladislao 38 Capecelatro, Diario, pp. 23 ff. The friar was later hanged. 39 Casanatense Anonymous, Narrazione della rivolta, f. 15r. 40 Ibid, f. 15v. 41 Ascanio Filomarino, Lettere del cardinal Filomarino, in Francesco Palermo, “Narrazioni e documenti sulla storia del regno di Napoli dall’anno 1552 al 1667,” Archivio storico italiano, IX (1846): 379–393, at p. 380.

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d’Aquino, invited him into his entourage. 42 With time, Ascanio garnered such a good reputation in Rome that, with Ladislao’s death, he passed into the Barberinis’ service, finally becoming cameriere segreto, a private servitor of the family’s pontiff, Urban VIII. Thanks to papal benevolence, Filomarino received the appointments of cardinal and archbishop of Naples, in 1642. With that, he returned to Naples. When the revolt broke out, it had been five years since Filomarino had come back to town. The cardinal had at once shown a haughty mien; he had little use for the knights, whose pride he knew very well. He had a run-in with Francesco Capecelatro, governor of the religious house of the Annunziata, when Francesco failed to invite him to the Feast of the Annunciation (4 April 1644), inviting instead Viceroy Medina.43 Jilted, Filomarino cancelled the festa and threatened excommunication. The viceroy pulled back, but swiftly ordered to remove the cardinal from the kingdom. The Consiglio Collaterale, the cabinet of jurists who advised him, firmly opposed the viceroy’s move, but could do nothing to spare his kinfolk from prison: and if Signor Scipione Filomarino, the cardinal’s brother, had not retreated into a church, as did others, they would have stayed there [in jail]. The Signore Prince della Rocca, with a summons of 25,000 ducats, was put under warrant at the orders of His Excellency [the viceroy] to go to prison at the castle of Gaeta, as, after the midday meal, today did happen, and he was escorted by many knights and friends in carriages.

Two years later, the cardinal took part in another episode: he challenged the nobles of the Capuana seggio concerning the feast of San Gennaro, patron saint of Naples. Every year, a different seggio had the honour of keeping Gennaro’s relics in its own chapel. That year (1646), it fell to the seggio of Capuana. So, the knights sent their master of ceremonies to the cardinal, for the keys to the treasure of Saint Protector Gennaro. But the cardinal, to whom a request from so lowly a bearer seemed rude, explained to the master of ceremonies that it fell to the nobles themselves to ask the archbishop for the keys. But the nobles would not go. The cardinal, digging in his heels, went on procession with the relics, not even traversing the territory of the 42 See, for these notices, Loredana Lorizzo, La collezione del cardinal Ascanio Filomarino. Pittura, scultura e mercato dell’arte tra Roma e Napoli nel Seicento, (Naples: Electa, 2006), pp. 18 ff. Massimo Bray, Filomarino, Ascanio, DBI, 47 (1997), pp. 709-802; Lorizzo, “‘Il Cappello questo Cardinale se l’ha guadagnato a sudor di sangue.’ Una biografia secentesca di Ascanio Filomarino,” Aprosiana, x 2003 (2004), pp. 35–47; the rich biography by Giuseppe Mrozeck Eliszezynski, Ascanio Filomarino. Nobiltà, Chiesa e potere nell’Italia del Seicento (Rome: Viella, 2017). 43 See for this incident, Galasso, Il Regno di Napoli, p. 222.

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seggio di Capuana. Riled by his behaviour, the nobles awaited him in the street. When the procession arrived nearby, they blocked it in order to read out a “protest” accusing the cardinal of acting as if he were master of the city’s reliquary. A clash erupted and Filomarino had to shelter in a nearby private house. 44 As one can imagine, this episode made a great splash. At Rome, some cardinals bridled at the “little respect shown the purple, and those of the French faction made a great ruckus with the pope, saying, ‘Look, Most Holy Father, what kind of respect the vassals of the Spaniards bear to bishops and cardinals, and how they have no respect for God, a thing that the heretics of Germany would never do’.”45 Since all that fuss, little more than a year had passed. We do not know the temper of the relations between the cardinal and the nobles. Nor do we know if he had heard of the plot of the two Carafa, Diomede and Peppe. We do soon learn, reading the chronicles of the revolt, that, alongside Genoino, the cardinal was striving to craft demands that, according to the dottore and others, could change markedly living conditions in the city. Now, how much the cardinal, fine prince that he was, believed that the viceroy would really consent to a radical reform of the laws regulating the political and economic life of the city remains an open question. 46

4. At the Prisons After speaking with the cardinal, Masaniello, de Simone, and the others headed to the prisons of San Giacomo, in the Toledo district. They started with those nearest the palace. The Spaniards of the guard put up a futile resistance. One hundred and twenty prisoners were freed. Then, adds the Casanatense Anonymous, better informed than other chroniclers, a man approached Masaniello and his Alarbi to say that there were other men, still locked up, in the San Giacomo prison. At the news, Masaniello turned back to free “fourteen other prisoners.” The captain of the Alarbi wanted to see his job done well. What happened next confirms this wish. There was a discussion: where to go next? Someone proposed the Vicaria tribunal. Masaniello responded: 44 Tutini-Verde, Racconto della sollevatione, pp. 2 ff. The chroniclers see this episode as having provoked the tumult. 45 Ibid., p. 5. 46 Il duca d’Arcos al re, Napoli 15 luglio 1647, in Rosario Villari, Per il re o per la patria, pp. 147–152: at p. 152; the cardinal’s prudence in the first days of the revolt has been stressed by Musi, La rivolta di Masaniello, p. 130. The cardinal later showed dislike for the viceroy, from the end of August of that year. His behaviour then constrained him to defend himself: on this, see D’Alessio Contagi, pp. 65 ff.

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“If anybody speaks again of wrecking the Vicaria, I will have his throat cut.”47 The Vicaria had been founded by Charles V; it was thus to remain untouched. As we shall see, this revolt targeted the satisfaction of precise demands, and sought no break with Madrid. If this cautious political line emerged, as the source we consult makes clear, that strategy owed much or even all to the role that, in those hours, the Alarbis’ captain played. At the same time, something else matters: with the opening of the prisons, the ranks of the nascent army swelled. Freed thanks to Masaniello, many of the barefoot poor spontaneously flocked to him. He was swift to reassure them: he told them to abandon fear and follow him. They replied that “they were ready to lose a thousand lives for his service and would never desert his command, to the death.” Among these followers, says the Anonymous, were men and women for whom at last the hour of justice had come. From the prison run by Geronimo Letizia, governor of the gabella, the Anonymous had learned, perhaps from his knight friend who had been imprisoned, emerged a man who had failed to pay the gabella on a few mazzamorra (biscuit crumbs). He had been condemned to four years locked up. There also came out a woman guilty of a similar “crime.” To avoid prison, she had offered to Letizia to be his slave for life, but he had ordered her to go to the prison and sell her flesh. She had been there for four months when set free. Masaniello started to become, for many, a “man of justice” [giustiziere] sent by God. The Anonymous, seemingly a follower, also relates: out of the prison of the Visitatore came a man who was ill. Masaniello “gave orders that six men carry him to his house, and that they take from him no gift at all, and that, if they did so, he would cut off their heads.” None dared disobey. A little afterwards, a man of religion approached Masaniello to tell him that in the prison of the Visitatore Generale there was still “the accountant de Martino” and that he, the priest, would pay Masaniello 500 ducats to go free him. Masaniello replied harshly, “‘Go, priest, go to the devil, for, were you not a priest, I would cut off this head right now. What I am doing, I am doing for the common good, without interests,’ and he headed towards the house of the Visitatore.” Such fragments jibe well with others. Gian Battista Piacente, for instance, writes that Masaniello was “little prone to rapine,”48 even if he came from 47 Casanatense Anonymous, Narrazione della rivolta, f. 17r. 48 Giovan Battista Piacente, Le rivoluzioni del Regno di Napoli negli anni 1647–1648 e l’assedio di Piombino e Portolongone (Naples: G. Guerrera, 1861), p. 61. When the troubles broke out, this

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the poor world of the lazzari, who took that name because they dressed in paltry rags, like Lazarus risen from the tomb.49 Note some details that evoke the astounding scenes that evening. In the hours after the house of the fruit gabella was burned, the following prisons were opened: San Giacomo degli Spagnoli, the Baglivo (Santa Maria d’Agnone), the Nobil Arte della Seta (Silk Guild) at the Selleria, the Arte della Lana (Wool Guild) at Portanuova, the Almirante at San Giovanni de’ Fiorentini, San Bartolomeo, “Caserti” of the papal Nuncio, and that of the Visitatore Generale.50 Thousands of men and women flooded out through the streets. At the same time, fires broke out at all the houses where the taxes were collected. Masaniello had the support of collaborators besides Gioseppe. He had a brother, Giovanni, rather like him in appearance, he too clad as a seaman. At the Molo Grande (the sheltered port by Castel Nuovo), he took part in events; he threw the goods of the gabella officers onto the flames, saying, “See, my people, these are the goods of the officers of the flour gabella, who, with our blood, have impoverished others. We are throwing them in the fire at the orders of Tommaso Aniello d’Amalfi, my brother.”51 Giovanni also strove to enforce the code of conduct imposed by his brother Masaniello. Indeed, discovering a man who had stolen some jugs, he sent the fellow to his brother, who had meanwhile returned to the market. The man was first condemned, and then reprieved, “at the insistence of the people of the market.”52 All these things went on without anyone’s attempting resistance. To calm the plebs, Theatines and Capuchins came out in procession. They arrived with the “dead in hand [relics] and two crosses,” but were repulsed: “Go say prayers at your church and don’t come to disturb us now, for it is time to remove the unfair gabelle, for when they imposed them unfairly, you never appeared to make processions to have them removed.”53 The city, recounts dottor De Moneca, sided with the “barefoot.” “One did not see a single person who pushed back, or who said to them, ‘What are you writer moved to Nola and stayed with the prince of Montesarchio (Andrea d’Avalos). He then returned to Naples with the count of Oñate. After that, he was only partly present at the troubles. Nevertheless, thanks to his friendships, he could receive valuable information that moved in a tight circle of persons. 49 Tutini-Verde, Racconto della sollevatione, p. 26. For further information and reference to the scholarly literature on the barefoot also called lazzari, see Francesco Benigno, “Trasformazioni discorsive e identità sociali: il caso dei lazzari,” Storica, 31 (2005): 7–44. 50 For the list of prisons opened, see Fuidoro, Successi historici, p. 26. 51 Ibid., p. 25. 52 Ibid. 53 Donzelli, Partenope liberata, p. 14.

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doing?,’ but everybody, amazed, stupefied, and admiring stood watching the goings-on, or rather, said aloud to them, ‘set your hands to it!’ as if the actions pleased everybody altogether, as in effect was true; the people, avid and curious, whether noble, or civil and ignoble, thronged close, observing the future successes.”54 That the barefoot had the support of the civil population, or at least of much of it, emerges from many sources. Some chroniclers mention the dottori Onofrio di Palma, Andrea Mastellone, Luise Capaccio, and Vincenzo d’Andrea. But they add some details. Giraffi writes that Mastellone and di Palma were asked by the viceroy to try to calm “the people with ample promises of remuneration.”55 As for di Palma, Capecelatro speaks of his fidelity to the king.56 “‘They certainly do not fool me’ – said Masaniello in those days – ‘because I am advised by four women,” implying that there were some dressed as women lest they be recognized, who were giving him opportune advice.”57 Those who gave them advice were surely more than four, masked or not. One reads that old Genoino was the head of a consulta of more than ten learned men.58 54 Della Moneca, Istoria delle revoluzioni, f. 18r. 55 Giraffi, Le rivolutioni di Napoli, p. 57. But see also Niccolò Caputo, Frammenti degli Annali della Città di Napoli dal 1611 al 1679, scritti da N. C. Gentiluomo Napolitano, SNSP, XXI D 15, p. 197: “Then some persons in masks appeared, and it was said that they were the dottori Honofrio di Palma, Luise Capaccio and Vincenzo d’Andrea, but I am convinced that if they even did go there (a thing I do not believe), they would have gone at the viceroy’s behest.” In a “Nota” by Fuidoro, in the Diario di G. C. circa la sollevazione della Plebe di Napoli, of Campanile, one reads that the dottori of Law De Palma, Scacciavento and Capaccio helped draft the capitoli (f. 14r); De Palma was one of the kingdom’s most illustrious lawyers. In 1643, he had protested with others unhappy with the gabelle. Scacciavento had an anti-noble spirit: the viceroy may have wanted to involve him, to press for prudence. Other notices in the dense Pier Luigi Rovito, “La rivoluzione costituzionale di Napoli 1647–1648,” Rivista storica italiana, XCVIII (1986): 367–462, and Musi, La rivolta di Masaniello, pp. 132–133. 56 Capecelatro, Diario, p. 32. The same chronicler asserts that the man with a black cape was at the head of the assault on the palace and that d’Andrea was next to Genoino when the first riders began to arrive at the market in the attempt to reassure the plebs. Both, he says, were asking for electoral parity, the abolition of the gabelle, the direct election of the Eletto – in sum, Genoino’s programme (p. 35). 57 Giacomo Mayorica, I tumulti e revolutioni della città e regno di Napoli scritte colla maggiore accuratezza e diligenza che si è possuta dal P. D. G. M. monaco del Ven.le Monastero di S. Severino di Napoli l’istesso anno mese per mese, in Relazioni da Napoli sulla rivolta del 1647, Naples, SNSP XXVII A 13, ff. 32–111, at f. 61r. This account stems from an eyewitness report but also builds on other chronicles. 58 Anon., “Alli 9 di luglio alle 22 hore si diede la settimana passata”: Naples, ASN, I, Note, relazioni e altre carte relative alla rivolta antispagnola del 1647, sec. XVII, fasc. 30/19, p. 4.

III. Portrait Abstract The chapter assembles the information that surfaces in seventeenthcentury sources, about, above all, Masaniello’s own history. We see his hard life, his bad experiences and the extreme poverty in which he lived. We also learn his pastimes, his life in the Neapolitan taverns close to the Market. The plebeian youngster, long before the revolt, was keen to risk his life not only to have the gabelle lifted, but also to “do right by the canaglia, the popolo” and to relieve his city, burdened by its defeatism and general habit of just bumbling forward, catch-as-catch-can. Keywords: Lavinaio, church of the Carmine, prostitution, taverns, bandits

1.

“As Spirited and Vivacious as a Person Could Be”

But who was Masaniello? What do we know about his looks, his character, and his past? Giraffi portrayed him as: “a man of spirit and easy speech, of middling height, black of eye, more thin than fat, with a shock of hair, and a blond moustache; barefoot, wearing a shirt, and cloth leggings, with a cloth cap on his head in sailor fashion, but good-looking, as spirited and vivacious as a person could be, and as the effects have shown him to be.” He then added that his “profession” was to “fish for small fish with the rod and with the hook, and to buy fish, and carry it, and to sell it to some private persons of his quarter, and in Naples such persons are called fish-mongers.”1 Indeed, Masaniello worked at the so-called Pietra del Pesce (Fish Rock). Nevertheless, rather than plying the fisherman’s craft, he sold bundles of scrap paper and cast-offs of fish, along with his brother.2 So, he was a labourer even humbler 1 Giraffi, Le rivolutioni di Napoli, p. 11. 2 Donzelli, Partenope liberata, pp. 6–7; Fuidoro, Successi historici, p. 20; Simonetta, Historia delle rivoluzioni di Napoli, f. 39v.

D’Alessio, S. Masaniello. The Life and Afterlife of a Neapolitan Revolutionary Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2022 doi: 10.5117/9789463721455_ch03

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than what the chronicler describes here. For Giraffi, such low rank may have made it rather awkward to champion his unlikely protagonist. From other sources one learns that Masaniello also did domestic service, sometimes without pay. This was the case with Giovan Carlo Cacace, who accepted the bundle he had brought and told him not to show his face again, unless he wanted a good clubbing.3 Another time, the well-known bandit, Nicola Ametrano, left him without enough change to buy even a bite to eat.4 Fortunately, not all Masaniello’s clients were so arrogant. There was a friar from Bologna, Alessandro (Fra Sebastiano) Molini, who tells how Masaniello brought him fish at the convent.5 A Fra Savino also helped him hunt down a carlino or two. The Cronistoria (Chronicle) del Carmine Maggiore reports: “The aforesaid Masaniello was a rascal who frequented our convent and did services for the brethren, and from them he earned the greater part of his income; so it is no surprise that he was a friend of Fra Savino Zaccardo, our lay brother.” Nevertheless, Masaniello was not only an employee of fishmongers, but also a youngster who did services of all sorts, just to get by. Piacente writes that his work “was a good bit less respected than that of a lowly portaroba [porter]. So small was the profit to be had from his line of work that there was no job, no matter how degraded, that, to sustain his life, he did not shoulder.”6 One day, the agent of the Marquis of Brienza, Don Mercurio Cimmino da Corchiano, a subject of the papal state, called Masaniello. Some caciocavalli (cheeses with a head and neck that hang in pairs), had just arrived and Mercurio, wanting to dodge the gabella, thought that perhaps the youngster

3 Della Moneca, Istoria delle revoluzioni, f. 36r. 4 Mayorica, I tumulti e revolutioni, f. 94r. 5 Alessandro Molini, Racconto preceduto da Nova osservatione sopra il prodigioso mostro apparso in Polonia interpretato sopra li successi di Tommaso Anello d’Amalfi, occorsi nella città di Napoli l’anno 1647, lungo 35 piedi: largo 4 cubiti e mezzo: alto 10 cubiti e mezzo: con scaglie al collo e alla coda: tutto il resto è rosso di color di carne, e con faccia humana, SNSP, XXVI C 1, p. 19. The text on the “monster” said to have foretold the revolt was published at Naples in 1647 and dedicated to Cornelio Spinola. The Racconto is a copy of a manuscript at the Archiginnasio of Bologna, with many portraits of Masaniello and his family. Some of these were published in Capasso, Masaniello, pp. 85 ff., others in Masaniello nella drammaturgia europea e nella iconografia del suo secolo, edited by Roberto De Simone, Christiane Groeben, Mario Melchionda and Aleid Peters (Naples: Macchiaroli, 1998). Molini, born in Bologna in 1620, took holy orders and was “reborn” as Fra Sebastiano in 1643. See Francesco Moratti, “‘Sollevazione di Tommaso Aniello di Napoli.’ Il manoscritto di Alessandro Molini (BUB, ms. 2466),” Storicamente, 13 (2017), no. 10. DOI: 10.12977/stor665, with the manuscript digitalized in full. 6 Piacente, Le rivoluzioni del Regno, p. 61.

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could help him.7 Masaniello pulled off the trick and Don Mercurio was duly grateful. After paying, he asked, how old was he and had he family? Masaniello replied that he had a wife and children, and that they were barely scraping by. Don Mercurio understood and it grieved him, so the youngster invited Mercurio to become his compare, literally his god-kinsman, but really just his formal firm, fast friend, and Mercurio accepted the invitation. This tale is a little window on a world we seldom see. It shows an everyday rapport between diverse social classes, one tighter than we might think. A friar or a dottore of the law could have need of a plebeian to dodge the gabella, and vice versa: the lowly could use the powerful to evade imprisonment, as we shall see with Masaniello. Let us look at the more careful physical portraits available to us: This Tommaso Aniello is young, about twenty-seven, of average height, of early, fresh body hair, with a head of hair flowing and black, of whitish complexion tending toward pallor, not too thin (he is as one says here, a plump youngster), the face a little long, the voice clear.8 Twenty-three years and some months old, not tall, face longish and thin, nose long, eyes lynx-like of various colours, with a thin blond hair above his upper lip, hair of the head not very black, longish at the ears, spilling back, and combed forward on the forehead, dressed in a shirt, with small hose of rough cloth, with a red cloth hat, and he always went barefoot, a very dirty man, seller of fish in the market, in the Selleria district, and at the Pietra del Pesce.9 7 Tutini-Verde, Racconto della sollevatione, pp. 28–29. For Masaniello’s work as a smuggler, see also Aurelio Musi, “Masaniello. Linee per una biografia,” in La costa di Amalfi nel secolo XVII. Atti del convegno di Studi di Amalfi, 1–4 aprile 1998 (Amalfi: Centro di cultura e storia amalfitana, 2001), pp. 267–277. 8 Montanario, Tutte le cose notabili, f. 8r. 9 Della Moneca, Istoria delle revoluzioni, f. 22r. The dottore’s description lends credence to the one by Onofrio Palumbo (private collection). There, too, Masaniello seems to have two distinctive traits: a long face and a prominent nose. On this and other portrayals, see Katia Fiorentino, “La rivolta di Masaniello del 1647,” in Civiltà del Seicento a Napoli. Catalogo della Mostra (Naples: Electa, 1984), vol. II, pp. 43–49, and Katia Fiorentino, “‘Uno, nessuno e centomila’. Le multiformi immagini di un eroe popolare,” in Masaniello, edited by Aurelio Musi (Naples: Elio de Rosa, 1994), pp. 32–37; on the revolt more generally: Alain Hugon, Naples insurgée, ch. IX (Images de la révolte), pp. 291 ff. See the Spanish edition, La insurrección de Nápoles, 1647–1648. La construcción del acontecimiento (Zaragoza: Prensas de la Universidad de Zaragoza, 2014), pp. 365 ff.; Joana Fraga-Joan-Lluís Palos, “Trois révoltes en images. La Catalogne, le Portugal et Naples dans les années 1640,” in Soulèvements, révoltes, révolutions dans l’empire des Habsbourgs d’Espagne, XVIe –XVIIe siècles, edited by Alain Hugon and Alexandre Merle (Madrid: Casa de Velásquez, 2016),

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The label – deer-hunting eyes [occhi cervieri], meaning lynx eyes, is striking. It suggests a person used to watching closely, one whom no movement escapes. All told, Masaniello seems to have made a good impression: “His appearance is polite […] whoever looks at him cannot help loving him,” writes a sympathetic report from Naples.10 His dress was for certain the same clothing Giraffi describes: red cloth hat in the sailor fashion, shirt, leggings, and the fellow was dirty, “like a man who sleeps nights in the stables.” Tommaso Aniello D’Amalfi, called Masaniello, as per the Neapolitan habit of using diminutives as usual names (as the Ferrarese Bisaccioni remarked), twenty-seven years old, lived at the market, in piazza majura, the great trading square, above the office-house of one of the gabelle, of either livestock or lesser-weight grains.11 So never a day he could forget the gabelle for a day. His house was cramped: two little rooms rigged from a single space, in one of which slept Masaniello and his wife Berardina Pisa, while his brother Giovanni slept in the other. In the source that tells us this – interesting to see because it shows that Masaniello served as his brother’s guide in life and suggests, as do other sources, that the two no longer had a father – one also reads that they slept “on boards and sacks of straw, and that they barely earned enough to be able to live day by day.”12 The only feature that elevated this dwelling perched on an outside wall: a coat of arms, the symbol of Charles V, with its two-headed eagle and a tie around its neck, which Masaniello himself took to be an omen of his future greatness.13

pp. 119–138. The most recent essay is Piero Ventura, “Dai codici al cinema: note sulla memoria iconografica della rivolta antispagnola di Napoli,” Visual History. Rivista internazionale di storia e critica dell’immagine, IV (2018): 43–64; Sheila McTighe, Representing from Life in Seventeenth Century Italy (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020), pp. 221–244. 10 Anon., Relatione della sollevatione seguita in Napoli alli 7 Luglio 1647, f. 49r. 11 Campanile, Diario di G. C. circa la sollevazione della Plebe di Napoli, f. 7, and Pollio, Historia del Regno di Napoli, f. 24v. 12 For information on how the three lived together: Anon., “Alli 9 di luglio alle 22 hore si diede la settimana passata,” p. 1. The information on dividing the dwelling in half appears in Anon., Storia di Masaniello, f. 35r. This source was cited by Bartolommeo Capasso, in “La piazza del mercato di Napoli e la casa di Masaniello,” in Capasso, Masaniello, pp. 19–59. The inscription on the modern stone that now marks the place where Masaniello’s house stood reads as follows: “In questo luogo / era la casa dove / nacque il xxix giugno MDCXX / Tommaso Aniello D’Amalfi / e dove dimorava / quando fu capitano generale / del popolo napoletano. Il comune di Napoli pose il 7 luglio 1997.” 13 Giraffi, Le rivolutioni di Napoli, p. 12; Pollio, Historia del Regno di Napoli, f. 24r. Mayorica, in his I tumulti e revolutioni, f. 86r, writes that it was said that “the eagle signifies his dominion, the leash the traps that were laid for him. Tyranny is never secure but is surrounded by suspicion and fear. Sedition of the people is not separate from the gallows.”

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The Mother Sold “Toccati”…

We possess little information about Masaniello’s family, and what we do have proves uncertain. The Casanatense Anonymous relates that he grew up among people “of the lowest class,” and “horrid,” in the Lavinaio quarter, where he was born, on 29 June 1620. To grow up in that part of town meant knowing both some of Naples’ good sides and many of the bad. The good were, above all, the offerings of the earth, the sea, and the marshes. When the market was on, one saw there all the colours and smelled all the odours of a natural world that today we would call pristine. Tutini tried to list the many goods found at Naples, and in the kingdom (fruits, medicinal herbs, etc.) to demonstrate the great variety of each species. Here is what he wrote about the cherries and the figs: One sees cherries in a similar abundance, but of various sorts: the Majolica cherry, the Lettere cherry [Lettere is a village near Naples], the Sorrento cherry, the sugar-cane cherry, big and black and delicate to the taste with the quality of black amarena cherries […] and the multitude of figs and their diversity and their taste are great, for, from the time when they first appear down to the end of autumn there is always an abundance of them in Naples, of varied sorts, and they begin at the end of May, and they are dove figs, big and flavourful so that they seem so many purses of honey, then there are the gentili figs [ ficus carica], and the octave figs, very pleasing to the taste and in great abundance.14

Of the seafood, he recorded the odours: The smell that one senses coming from the seafood, which in the evening the various squares of the city are full of, and the fragrance consoles the sick and the healthy, as of spondili, razor clams, limpets, anemonies […], clams, and tellina clams, placed on good-smelling seaweed.

Given such surroundings, one might ask what the world would have been like without gabella-takers. 14 Camillo Tutini, Anatomico discorso del Regno di Napoli, Naples, BNN, Branc., II A 8, ff. 2r-41v, at f. 7v. For comments on this treatise, a source for Neapolitan society of its era, see Giuseppe Galasso, “Una capitale dell’impero,” in Galasso, Alla periferia dell’impero. Il Regno di Napoli nei secoli XVI–XVII (Turin: Einaudi, 1994), pp. 354 ff.

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And now let us turn to the ills that beset Masaniello, starting with what information we have of his family. The Anonymous knew that the father of Tommaso Aniello, Francesco, had been a mender of shoes and that his mother had been a prostitute. One should not omit saying – explains the Anonymous – that Masaniello was the son of a shoe-mender of the market, the mother was a public whore, and, in the end, being no longer pretty she went around selling toccati around Naples, and she was the procuress of her daughter-in-law; the wife filled herself with bread only so far as she let herself be known carnally by some tavern-keeper’s servant and by some porter, whether of the market or of the Pietra del Pesce, and in particular, the said Nerettino knew her carnally.15

In fact, few write that Masaniello’s father was a fisherman. A Spaniard declares that the parents were “f ishermen, and of the lowest dregs of the people.”16 Giraffi mentions some kinfolk on the margins of the fishseller class, as Masaniello seemed to be, “and other kinfolk of that same Masaniello, all of them daughters of workmen of the fish trade.”17 But no chronicler seems to have precise information. The idea that his father was a fisherman seems to stem from Masaniello’s presence in that scene and from his family name, conjuring Amalf i ancestry.18 The aff irmation of the Anonymous is credible (he averred that the father was a man who put soles on sandals, a sola chianelle), where he says that he was an employee of fishmongers. When the revolt broke out, Francesco d’Amalfi had likely been dead for some years. Indeed, in the document for the marriage of Masaniello’s sister, Grazia Francesca, wed in 1641, the father is not found among the witnesses. Two other documents lend support to this hypothesis, mentioning an uncle who first welcomed the young Masaniello into his

15 Casanatense Anonymous, Narrazione della rivolta, f. 9v. 16 Relaçion del tumulto sucedido en Napoles, en siete de Julio deste año de 1647, in Madrid, BNM, ms. 2378, ff. 481, at f. 312. There are other discordant pieces of evidence about the father’s work: Anon., Vita di Masaniello: he was the son of a “lavoratore di terra,” but it refers to Tontoli, who says no such thing in Il Mas’Aniello. The Venetian resident writes that he was a “macellaro [butcher],” writes Luigi Madaro, “I tumulti napoletani del 1647 secondo una relazione inedita tratta dall’Archivio di Stato di Torino,” in Studi di storia napoletana in onore di Michelangelo Schipa (Naples: ITEA, 1926), pp. 473–479, at p. 478. 17 Giraffi, Le rivolutioni di Napoli, p. 132. 18 Some argue for an origin on the Amalfi coast, among them M.lle De Lussan (Baudot de Juilly), Histoire de la Révolution du Royaume de Naples, dans les Années 1647 & 1648. Par Mademoiselle de Lussan (Paris: chez Pissot, 1757), vol. I, p. 44.

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house, but then expelled him, as too burdensome to keep, thanks to his loathing for the gabellieri. The fellow, from his boyhood, gave signs of very great aversion to the gabelle, of which he always complained so that an uncle of his who kept him in his house was constrained to dismiss him, fearing to incur harm from his complaints, having first scolded him many times, but without success, and he [Masaniello] remained always in the same state of mind down to this time, when he was about 22 years old.19

The mother, Antonia Gargano, as said, had been a prostitute, and we have confirmation,20 but she later sold toccati: head-bands, little pieces of embroidered cloth, called in Spanish tocados, which married women of the Lavinaio wore.21 Masaniello’s wife, Berardina Pisa (born 29 July, 1625), and his sister, Grazia Francesca – one of several whom we have mentioned – were also prostitutes.22 Berardina practiced her trade with Masaniello’s full knowledge; in many sources we read that he suffered derision because his wife was “enjoyed” even by men who knew him: Nerettino and Fra Savino. The mother, a sister, the wife, all prostitutes: Masaniello’s family reflects the difficulties of life, especially in the lower classes, in the Naples of the time. Perhaps, however, prostitution had spread to Naples only in recent years; it went beyond the lower orders. Fuidoro tells of a noble woman who had recently been forced to sell the honour of her three daughters.23 Alongside the growth in the number of gabelle to pay, and punishment by imprisonment, note that the one gabella that Viceroy Medina had abolished was the one on prostitution, on account of the many “scandals” occurring daily.24 19 Vincenzo de’ Medici, letters in SNSP, XXVII A 13, ff. 123r-135r. On this, see Di Franco: Le rivolte del Regno di Napoli, p. 413. This notice is similar to another that indicates that Masaniello went to live at the house of an uncle: Anon., Relatione della sollevatione della città di Napoli dell’anno 1647, f. 51r. 20 At Masaniello’s funeral it was said “that he had died excommunicated and that it had been a long time since he went to confession and that his mother had been a woman of little virtue”: Mayorica, I tumulti e revolutioni, f. 100r. 21 As one reads in Capasso, Masaniello, p. 80: “married women used the toccato, which was a regular thing at the Mercato and Lavinaio.” 22 Capecelatro, Diario, p. 105. 23 Fuidoro, Successi historici, p. 17. There are also remarks on the diffusion of prostitution in a still-unpublished poem by Cola Jacono Squessa, Poemetto in dialetto napoletano sulla rivolta del 1647, SNSP, XXVIII D 12, f. 32: “So to get by in life, everybody sold their goods, their wives and their daughters.” 24 Domenico Antonio Parrino, Teatro eroico e politico de’ governi de’ viceré del Regno di Napoli dal tempo del re Ferdinando il Cattolico fino al presente (Naples: D.A. e M., M.L. Parrino, 1692–1694), vol. II, p. 188.

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According to Tutini and Verde, as we have seen, Masaniello had children. Elsewhere, in a brief account, there is talk of a girl old enough to marry off: at the time, that would have meant fourteen or a little older: if so, Masaniello would have conceived her when he was thirteen.25 A more trustworthy version, among the many on this matter, is what the notary Montanario tells us: “till now without children, but, according to rumour, he has made his wife pregnant.”26 In another source one reads indeed: “the wife is pregnant, and is kept in castello [in a village] at five carlini a day.”27 Berardina was sixteen when she married Masaniello (20 April 1641). They had made the first of the banns – three were customary – on the day when Grazia Francesca wed, as is clear from the promissory documents relating to Grazia Francesca’s marriage and to the marriage between Masaniello and Berardina.28 The d’Amalf i siblings, thus, were Tommaso Aniello, Antonio Carmine (baptized on 19 August 1622), Giovanni Battista (baptized on 3 June 1624), and Grazia Francesca (baptized on 19 April 1626).29 Of that second child, 25 Anon. Relatione. Dell’origine, progressi, e stato della sollevatione del Popolo nella Città di Napoli, Naples, BNN, Branc. V F 15, misc. ff. 419, at f. 47r. 26 Montanario, Tutte le cose notabili, f. 7v. 27 Cose di Napoli, in Anon., Relazione, Naples, ASN, ms. 110, f. 124v. 28 The marriage document: “Essendosi fatte le tre denunzie ne’ tre giorni festivi continui, cioè a’ 27 Gennario, 2, 19 febbraio 1641, inter missae parrochialis solemnia et non essendo scoperto alcun impedimento, io abbate don Giovanni Matteo Peta, per me interrogato in chiesa Tommaso Aniello di Amalfi et Berardina Pisa napoletani, dicti habitano a questa parrocchia, et avuto il loro mutuo assenso, servata la forma del S.C.T. et decreto di Monsignor Vicario Generale, con lo quale despensa etiam il bimestre elapso, l’ho solennemente conjunto in matrimonio per verba de presenti et vi furono presenti Domenico de Satis, napoletano, figlio di Nuncio, di questa parrocchia, Giovan Battista Pisa, napoletano, figlio di Scipione, di questa parrocchia; Domenico d’Alessandro, napoletano, figlio di Vincenzo, di questa parrocchia et Clerico Andrea Catone, et altri.” (Reg. cit., Lib. VII dei Matrimoni, f. 3 n. 18). Berardina also belonged to the parish of Santa Caterina. She was baptized there: “Addì 29 Luglio 1625, Bernardina, figlia di Pietro Pisa et Adriana de Satis è stata battezzata da me D. Giovan Matteo Peta et levata dal sacro fonte da Prutentia Calenda, avanti al Carmine,” (Ibid., Lib. xii dei battezzati, f. 151 n. 183): Bartolommeo Capasso, Masaniello, pp. 86 and 87 (from La famiglia di Masaniello, 1875). 29 Bartolommeo Capasso, Masaniello, pp. 86 and 87 (from La famiglia di Masaniello, 1875). Capasso returned to this matter, setting right some biographical data, and then I corrected them for this edition: Masaniello, p. 170 (from Masaniello ed alcuni di sua famiglia effigiati nei quadri nelle figure e nelle stampe del tempo, 1897); Capasso also read that another brother, Giuseppe Carmine, was twin brother of Giovanni; on these later corrections, see also Francesco D’Esposito, “La figura di Masaniello nell’opera di Bartolommeo Capasso,” in Bartolommeo Capasso. Storia, filologia, e erudizione nella Napoli dell’Ottocento, edited by Giovanni Vitolo (Naples: Guida, 2005), pp. 217–244.

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of whom Cuomo and Palermo found mention in the baptismal register for Santa Caterina, we find no further trace. But some hints emerge from the chronicle at the Casanatense Library. On 12 July, when he was already “Capitano Generale,” Masaniello gave assorted titles to trusted persons. One among them was his brother Giovanni, upon whom he conferred the title of “Comissario Generale della Campagna,” and also ordered him to wed his widowed sister-in-law.30 Masaniello had thus, it seems, lost a married brother, perhaps that Antonio Carmine whose baptismal document has survived. This loss would have made Masaniello feel even weaker.

3.

Misfortunes and Pastimes

The few other surviving accounts about Masaniello’s past signal that he had been in prison. Once, he managed to avoid detention; he was supposed to go “on account of the fish gabella,” but Fuidoro’s brother, a lawyer, saved him, as Fuidoro himself attests. Fuidoro’s paternal house risked being burned by the lazzari, but Masaniello opposed them, “mindful of the favour done him in the past by my brother, who took him up with great humanity one day when he was going to jail on account of the gabella on fish, so that he never had to lay eyes on the prisons.”31 Another time he went to jail, instead, for debt, either at the Grande Almirante prison or at the Vicaria, where he may have become acquainted with the young dottore Marco Vitale, handsome and dissolute.32 What pushed Masaniello to the abyss’s edge was his vice of gambling. Many chronicles call him a “blasphemer and gambler.” In Naples, gambling houses abounded because the court made a profit on their operations: as is well known, there was indeed a gabella on playing cards.33 What these places 30 Casanatense Anonymous, Narrazione della rivolta, f. 52v. 31 Anna Maria Giraldi, Introduzione to Fuidoro, Successi historici, p. xxii. 32 Casanatense Anonymous, Narrazione della rivolta, f. 51v. But also see Anon., Storia di Masaniello, 31r: saying that instead they first knew one another at the Vicaria prison and that Vitale used Masaniello for some “services.” The prison did not feed its prisoners. They fell back either on their own resources or on public compassion. That explains the solidarity with Masaniello, even among persons of different class like dottore Vitale, son of a dottore and of a mother from among the people. See Carlo De Frede, “Il tribunale della Vicaria. Scene di vita, di dolore, di morte nella Napoli spagnuola,” Napoli nobilissima, vol. XXXIV (1995), fasc. 1–2: 37–60. 33 Accounts of Masaniello as gambler appear in Tutini-Verde, Racconto della sollevazione, p. 14; Della Moneca, Istoria delle revoluzioni, f. 21, where he appears as gambling with dice; Anonymous, Storia di Masaniello, f. 6v; Montanario, Tutte le cose notabili, f. 8r. Social commentators thought gambling led to misery and blasphemy. The viceroys therefore prohibited it. But, in more recent

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were like we would have never learned had the revolt not happened and the people torched them. They were places where the poor made themselves yet more destitute and where they cursed, whenever they lost money. After Masaniello had died, there went a crowd of the people to declare to His Excellency these crimes that were permitted, and almost throwing reproaches in the face of the viceroy and his ministers, who conceded these licences to commit graft to persons of every social sort, for a most vile profit that went to the regents of the Vicaria court and to the captains of justice and other military chiefs. The people saw fit to supplicate His Excellency to dismiss these infernal sects. The viceroy could not say no to this demand.34

Such notices illuminate a little-known side of Masaniello’s life, for which we have other evidence. He spent his time in the open air, in the rude dwellings where gambling went on, at and near the Pietra del Pesce. With his exuberant personality, he did well at play. The author of the Vita di Masaniello portrays him as charismatic and authoritative. He liked, the source says, to jump into quarrels, solve disputes, and lay down who was wrong or right. There was no ruckus in which Masaniello was not the mediator, there was no controversy he did not decide, nor injustice not remedied by him. Nor was there a sale or purchase, or giving or taking of goods where usage asks for a paper record. So it was that, with Masaniello set up as judge, he had nothing to do all day but settle the conflicts now of one man, now of another, and to resolve quarrels, and establish concord among these vile, filthy plebeians.35

These reports, though they harness the already lively stereotype of the turbulent Neapolitan,36 do seem plausible. Masaniello gave clear signs of years, thanks to fiscal pressures, gambling was largely tolerated. For the attitudes of the viceroys one century earlier, see Giuseppe Ceci, “Il giuoco a Napoli durante il viceregno,” Archivio storico per le Province Napoletane, XXII (1897): 241–254. 34 Fuidoro, Successi historici, pp. 82–83. 35 Anon., Vita di Masaniello, f. 4r. The Anonymous (at f. 45v) portrays himself as an eyewitness: “They seemed like so many Furies from Avernus, and when they passed my house I went to my window to see so horrendous a spectacle of poor armed beggars shouting, as if possessed by demons.” 36 See Giuseppe Galasso, “Lo stereotipo del napoletano e le sue variazioni regionali,” in Galasso, L’altra Europa, pp. 143–190. Here we see the origins of the comedic Neapolitan; see also Tommaso Astarita, Between salt water and holy water, chapter VI.

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a certain sense of justice, so says his supporter dottore Simonetta. Having seen him cope well with one of the revolt’s first days, he wrote: He heard all the business brought before him, giving swift remedy to what they asked of him. They brought before him a hundred and a thousand quarrels about warfare, from captains, and about justice from him who saw himself oppressed by the powerful, and he, almost like a councillor of state, gave remedy to some, and like a regent, or a legislator […] it seemed truly that he had the law in his chest, and at times, to the many requests, to answer with some solid foundation, putting his hand to his eyes, and taking counsel with his thoughts, he then proffered sentences so full of judgment, that in the minds of those present he seemed more than human.37

Another thing that emerges from the sources is Masaniello’s gift for joking. He often cruised the taverns to scrounge a bite to eat and the hosts did not chase him off because his lively presence drew clients. Some Neapolitan taverns put on shows.38 According to La Vita di Masaniello: “when he wanted to feed his body, he needed only to show up at the tavern-keeper’s door, and at once he was invited in and put at table, and with his clowning, mixing conceits learned by heart, he struck beholders as a great marvel.”39 According to this author, from such vices virtues sprang, a quid magis, an extra something, that made Masaniello special. He writes: He found himself, after about two years which he had spent in the aforesaid vices, without having had a trade with which to make a living: he 37 Anonymous, Storia di Masaniello, f. 27r. 38 Leone, La vita quotidiana, p. 282: “The places available [for performances], numbering around 150, were scattered all across the city and the outlying casali, and had very picturesque names: Acqua e Pesa [Water and Scale], Acqua della Bufola [Buffalo Water], Armosa [Beautiful], Astriciello [Little Attic], Barca scassata [Broken Boat], Carcioffole [Artichokes], Capocefalo [Mullet(fish)-head], Penta [a name], Segetta [Sedan Chair], Tre Re [Three Kings], Zoccola [Big Rat]; to these were added those that take their name from the place they stood, and these are the most common.” A famous one at the Cerriglio staged comedies. No wonder that Masaniello showed off with stories and jokes at a humble tavern at the market. 39 Masaniello spoke with “concetti alla napoletana [conceits in the Neapolitan mode],” reinvented listening and speaking with persons more cultured than he. See Anon., Compendio di Ribellione colla Morte di Terentio Agnelli, in Di Relationi diverse di Giustitie fatte in Napoli molte delle quali seguite in tempo di Massaniello et altre doppo la Ribellione di alcuni Capi di essa, Vatican City, BAV, Urb. Lat. 1747, vol. II, ff. 409, at f. 288r. Note that his ready tongue is also attested to in the chronicle of the notary Montanario, f. 7r. For his lively nature, see also Anon., Storia di Masaniello, f. 10r, and De Fiore, Racconto de Tumulti popolari, p. 11.

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had added to these vices spirit and great talent, by means of which any poor man or beggar sometimes made a certain supernatural virtue show forth (what they call a quid magis), and [a gift] useful for many things. 40

Masaniello also knew how to play the cetra, a kind of guitar. His nature was expressive, so that, for this reason, many, when busy talking, wanted him, in conversations, singing songs, and playing a certain cetra that he had learned in the house of his master, so that, when he was gay, he made many people come together. For these light virtues of his, or perhaps vices, he acquired a certain benevolence among those companions of his. 41

Perhaps, at least at the start, the author here wished to win readership for his Vita di Masaniello, and thus hoped to mediate between the captain of the Alarbi and the “Neapolitan type,” noisy and vivacious. But we have other evidence of Masaniello’s histrionic, glib nature. One very interesting clue comes from Pollio. On Sunday, 14 July, Masaniello went to Posillipo; something strange happened, on that trip, taken with men “conquered” by the viceroy: The poor fellow, deranged, instead of getting off that boat, threw himself into the sea with all his clothes on, and the lads round about, the ones who, with their canes, had been soldiers of Tommaso Aniello, thinking that he was joking around as was his wont, swarmed him, and Tommaso Aniello, coming out of the scrum, grabbed his sword and began to chase his famous soldiers.42

Masaniello “joked around.” To his lads, he was a teacher who was never boring and there was no need to keep your distance: his “soldiers” “swarmed him,” but on that occasion the capitan chased them off.

4. “All Riled Up” Although Masaniello’s grudge against the gabella officers traced back to his adolescence, it had grown much sharper more than a year ago, as one 40 Anon., Vita di Masaniello, f. 3r. 41 Ibid., f. 2v. 42 Pollio, Historia del Regno di Napoli, f. 75r. Masaniello’s glib, burlesque manner of course helps explain his success. On this, see Dini, Masaniello, p. 17.

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manuscript tells us: “Now the said Masaniello […] it has been more than a year now, they say that he was going around saying, ‘Lads, when we revolt, when we rise’.”43 His discontent had probably grown due to the introduction of the gabella on fruit. Della Moneca recounts that, in the months before the revolt, one heard him often in the poorer quarters: “‘If someday I will be the chief, I will re-arrange this dog-pack of a people and destroy all the thieves who are consuming the fat of the city, and courts.’ Other times [he was] heard to say, ‘If I will be chief for ten days I want to adjust everybody, and all I have to do is die for the people’.”44 Giraffi knew of his agreement with Miccaro Perrone, the notorious bandit chief. Four days before the festa of Corpus Christi, 16 June, he had gone to Perrone, then hidden at the Carminiello (not far from the Carmine), all upset because the gabella officials had carried off some fish on which he had not paid the tax: “Either I have to be hanged or I intend to change this city.” Perrone and a friend began to laugh, as often happened even when Masaniello was being serious. “Sure! Sure! Fine idea! Go and change Naples!” But Masaniello, ignoring the laughter, said, “Don’t laugh, for if I had two or three men who think as I do, by God, I would show them what I can do.” “What would you do?” said the others. “Do you want to be with me?” “Why not,” said the others. “So pledge me your word […] and you will see what we need to do.” The two were rascals, no less than Masaniello, so, with nothing to lose, they pledged him the faith that he was seeking. 45 Masaniello’s yen to mobilize the people grew yet stronger after his wife’s misadventure. He had appealed to the governor of the flour, Geronimo Letizia, to no avail. Masaniello swore revenge: there were too many injustices and travails that he had either suffered or witnessed. He then took instruction from dottore Genoino, surely enthusiastically. The dottore had both experience and culture and seemed to cherish the people’s good. Masaniello was sure of it: here was a man worth heeding.

43 Anon., Relatione della sollevatione seguita in Napoli alli 7 Luglio 1647, f. 50r. 44 Della Moneca, Istoria delle revoluzioni, f. 22r. 45 Giraffi, Le rivolutioni di Napoli, p. 14.

IV. The First “Successes” Abstract Masaniello brings order to the revolt: he relieves those who sought refuge in the churches, and decrees that the gabelle desist. He is “in command,” even though many still have no notion who he is. So the bakers bake good bread, and the populace rejoices. Masaniello also pulls off raids on the street of the sword-smiths and at the dwellings of noble Ferrante Caracciolo, to arm the troops of the populace to secure the food supply. Meanwhile, fires sprout, targeting those who had battened off the gabella, or who had rallied support to vote the hated taxes in. Keywords: bread, arms, Ferrante Caracciolo, f ires, plunder, profiteering

1.

A New Scenario

That night, the viceroy left the convent of San Luigi to go up to castle Sant’Elmo.1 He then descended to Castelnuovo to meet the knights and ministers who had taken refuge there. And he ordered trenches dug. Masaniello, meanwhile, went to liberate the “fugitives” from the churches. Among his followers was a friar who lived in the same convent as Fra Sebastiano di Bologna. The next morning, with the authority he had acquired in the past few hours, Masaniello issued assorted orders: “that they collect no more gabelle, that bread should weigh 33 ounces.” He also “[…] sent out various companies not only through all the borghi of the city but also through all the casali [suburban villages], which are 36 in number, to have them take up arms and come aid the People of Naples.”2 So, in the city, it gradually became clear that one had to obey “Tomas’Aniello.” “And because the cause 1 Della Moneca, Istoria delle revoluzioni, f. 23r. 2 Ibid., f. 40v.

D’Alessio, S. Masaniello. The Life and Afterlife of a Neapolitan Revolutionary Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2022 doi: 10.5117/9789463721455_ch04

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was public, and useful to all the Peoples, the orders were embraced and carried out even though nobody knew who Tomas’Aniello was.” We read that the orders were “carried out with punctuality and great joy of the People.”3 But the greatest “joy” was seeing bread in “good form.” The bakers had seconded the will of the people, as both the cardinal and the viceroy, terrif ied by what has happening, had also given the command. 4 But let us ponder the meaning of that “joy.” From time out of memory, the local bread had been neither white nor of generous weight. A few hours back it was dark and small. Under the burden of various gabelle on its production, to swell their profit bakers cut corners and the bread was bad. The luoghi pii, the monasteries and convents, which baked better bread outside the gabella rules, could offer little help. Not all of them had ovens, and, moreover, sales to outsiders were both few and banned.5 Inevitably, the bread situation sparked revolts. The last of note had erupted on 2 May 1622. The plebs rose up against Cardinal Antonio Zapata (viceroy in the years 1620–1622). It was the festa of Saint Teresa. In the Porto district some plebeians went up to the coach, and, showing him some pieces of bread that in local language in Naples are called palate, to have him observe the bad quality, they begged him insistently to provide for their need, crying “Grascia! Grascia! [Abundance! Food!] They threw the palate almost in his face, in the carriage. Then the cardinal’s coachman tried to get free from the crowd without mishap, but he could not manage it.”6

The leaders of the protest were soon arrested and put to death, after torture. They stripped “the flesh from them with some tongs, heated in the fire, and another four died hanged by the neck, and another by hammer blows to his 3 Anonymous, Letter beginning: “Domenica 7 di luglio 1647,” Naples, ASN, Fondo Doria d’Angri, parte I, fascicolo 30/19, f. 1r. 4 The cardinal and the viceroy understood that it was absolutely necessary to open a dialogue with the plebs. The cardinal, as soon as he arrived at San Luigi, gave orders to make bread “of a [fair] weight, and better quality” (Filomarino, Lettere, p. 380). He and others sought out Michelangelo Ardizzone, conservatore of the civic granaries, and asked him to assure that the palata [loaf] grew to 32 once: Capecelatro, Degli Annali, p. 29. 5 Giuseppe Coniglio, “Annona e calmieri a Napoli durante la dominazione spagnuola. Osservazioni e rilievi,” Archivio storico per le province napoletane, n.s., XXVI (1940), p. 131. 6 In SNPS, Fondo Capasso (notes): ms. 9. For bread riots in this grain crisis, due to the poor harvest of 1621, see also Vittor Ivo Comparato, Uffici e società a Napoli (1600–1647). Aspetti dell’ideologia del magistrato nell’età moderna (Florence: Olschki, 1974), pp. 307 ff.

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temples.”7 With his Discorsi intorno ai remedii d’alcuni mali ai quali soggiace la Città e regno de Napoli (Discourses concerning the Remedies of some Ills to which the City and Kingdom of Naples are subject) (published in 1623, one year later), Fabio Frezza asked the viceroy to guarantee the plebs what it needed to live on. Otherwise, in his opinion, no government, however hard it tried, would be stable. “The plebs,” he wrote, “is like Cerberus. To keep it from barking, it is necessary to fill its jaws with bread. And, in a city so full of people, like Naples, it is very important to have the multitude on your side.”8 Little had changed when the bread problem came to the attention of Cornelio Spinola, the Genoese consul at the time of the aforementioned inquest, under Viceroy Medina. The consul proposed delegating all breadmaking to the city. If, he argued, the weight of bread were to rise to 30 ounces, given that the city consumed 300 tomoli [ca. 16,000 kilos] a day, with an eye to costs, there would be a profit of more than 5000 ducats a year. The trick was to find persons willing to make this bread, and that was far from easy. I believe that everyone would dislike putting that into practice, both for the persons, who would have to apply diligence and zeal to this apparatus, and for the provisions needing to be made at the right times, as their carelessness, lack of reputation, or negligence can cause enormous problems, but if the city could overcome this problem, and if it had the persons, who dispassionately, with credit and with love could apply themselves to take care of things, this affair would succeed, to my mind, with every difficulty overcome.

If the eletti and the viceroy, he concluded, were to take this plan to heart, it would give them “the greatest glory […] which would be the greater if with this were brought about a good relief of the city, removing from it a great part of the gabelle, in which case, because the palata of 28 ounces would be altogether sufficient, I would make it weigh that much.”9 7 Antonio Bulifon, Giornali di Napoli dal MDCXLVII al MDCCV, edited by Nino Cortese (Naples: Società Napoletana di Storia Patria, 1932), p. 117. 8 Fabio Frezza, Discorsi intorno ai remedii d’alcuni mali ai quali soggiace la Città, & il Regno di Napoli con altre scritture concernenti il servitio, & utile di Sua Maestà Cattolica, dedicati al duca d’Alba (Naples: Longo, 1623), p. 3. On this piece by Frezza, see Comparato, Uffici e società a Napoli, pp. 382 ff. 9 The document under discussion was called Incerto sopra l’appaltamento del pane [Uncertainty concerning the public bread contract], BNN, XXI E 31; Cornelio Spinola’s reply appears in the same volume at folios 465r ff. The manuscript dates from the years between 1640 and 1643. It contains a series of papers and comments by the consul; see Musi, Il console genovese a Napoli,

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“Glory” seems the right word. Given the telling traces we have of the suffering caused by the bread of Naples, there might indeed have been some “glory” to be had. But Viceroy Medina did not think it worth the bother to earn himself any, nor did the other viceroys after him. So, that glory all fell to the chiefs of the people, probably more than all the rest, on Masaniello and his brother Giovanni, who all took it upon themselves to go shop by shop to bring down the prices and to assure that the bakers produced a loaf of at least 33–34 ounces.

2.

To Arms

As we have seen, Masaniello also played an important role in the collecting of weapons that ensued once the prisons had sprung open. The Casanatense Anonymous informs his readers of these “enterprises.” He went to the street of the sword-makers, and to the lance-makers, and made them surrender “pistols, muskets, and arqebuses.” Knowing that Ferrante Caracciolo had many weapons, he told him – whether directly or not, we do not know – to hand them over.10 The noble yielded at once; later, the viceroy would reprove him.11 In the market, meanwhile, a great crowd gathered. Besides Masaniello, we know of other chiefs of the people: Perrone, freed by Masaniello himself, in the company of a friar from the same convent as Fra’ Molini (the notice comes from Molini’s own chronicle),12 and others too. Among them also appeared Peppe Palumbo, mentioned before, who likely turned up again at the market, perhaps already intending to play a double game, as will come clear later. Other names arise from the chronicles of the time: Andrea Basciano, from the Sellaria, a man once banished, who was named lieutenant of the militia; Carlo Catania, to whom was given the title of “overseer [provveditore] of the army”; and a Pietro de Apuzzo and Pietro Manna, pp. 167–183. Spinola’s estimate of consumption, some 16,000 kilos of a staple food for a city of more than 100,000, is surely far too low. 10 Casanatense Anonymous, Narrazione della rivolta, f. 28v. 11 For these details see: Casanatense Anonymous, Narrazione della rivolta, f. 29r ff.; De Fiore, Racconto de Tumulti popolari, p. 22; De Santis, Historia del tumulto, p. 60. For another record of Masaniello’s participation in these events, see Francisco de Eguía Beaumont, Varios discursos sobra la dedicatoria y Reducción de Nápoles 1647 (Mantua: Carpentana, 1649), a work dedicated to the Count of Oñate. 12 Molini, Racconto, p. 34. Molini makes clear that more than one friar sided with Masaniello, helping him.

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“adjutants.” Others joined them later, freshly sprung from prison. They clambered onto a broad platform in the market, recently left behind by an itinerant company of dancers. There were about 300 well-armed men, “with a goodly following of others, all these men were in allegiance to Perrone and Palumbo, who had all obtained from His Excellency [the viceroy] a general indult for them and for all their following, who had gathered in the market.”13 Masaniello was no longer alone. Indeed, he was not even, to everyone’s mind, the “chief”. Rather, it seemed that Perrone and Palumbo were “commanding.” Masaniello let them do it, because – our source is that partisan of the aristocrats, Piacente – what interested him was the public good, not being “capo” at any cost. At that time, it was Perrone who was thought to be their head, rather than Masaniello, who, for the zeal with which he had applied himself to raise the people from their miseries, little cared that he had a competitor for authority: in any case, no less than the others he went through the piazza of the market, where, from one minute to the next, new squadrons of partisans descended, giving the necessary orders and urging everyone to arm himself for the defence of the common cause.14

Among the orders issued was the one to set the fires, to the cost of those who had helped bring in the gabelle, who had urged the knights to vote for them, or who had contrived to invest in them. There was a list of fifty to seventy names, almost certainly drawn up by Genoino, although some of those burned-out, the incendiati, as they were called, were added to the list later, over the course of days, tarred for some other “guilt,” such as refusing to give the people weapons.15 13 Della Moneca, Istoria delle revoluzioni, f. 22v. 14 Piacente, Le rivoluzioni del Regno, p. 23. The Tuscan resident speaks of a different Capopopolo, one Aniello Pennone, “sentenced to exile,” and then discovered to have been conspiring with the nobles after the Wednesday conspiracy, and killed: de’ Medici, Lettere, p. 348, and also notes a Sicilian, a protagonist of the uprising’s first hours, but killed soon after. See, among others, Tutini-Verde, Racconto della sollevatione, p. 22. 15 On this list of those whose houses were to burn, see Giraffi, Le rivolutioni di Napoli, p. 50; Anonymous, Storia di Masaniello, f. 12r: “And the Consultori made a list of them and it was given into the hands of Tomas’Aniello.” On this, see also Tutini-Verde, Racconto della sollevatione, p. 26. The gabella system was also connected with the ecclesiastical structure and was integral to the state, as is clear in Musi, La rivolta di Masaniello, pp. 98 ff. For this reason, one had to aim high, the abolition of the gabelle, to obtain a real institutional reform, starting with electoral parity of people and nobility.

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Masaniello played a major role in that enterprise as well: he instructed the “burners,” the incendiari, barely more than boys, who set the fires. Armed with pitch and sulphur, they were instructed to knock down the big front doors of palaces pointed out to them, to enter the dwellings, and to cast down everything they found, windows included, onto a great heap. They were to kindle the whole lot. First hit by the lazzari fury was Geronimo Letizia, who had jailed Berardina, a man hated by Masaniello and by others. Letizia lived near the seggio of Portanuova. Of lowly origin, he had enriched himself, investing in the gabella of flour. Simonetta describes him as “a too proud villain, badly created,” and remembers him seated near the house of “his” gabella: “when he sat in that gabella, if one did not think that he was a proud plebeian, he seemed like Conte Cola [a legendary fifteenth-century condottiere], and he would not have done a favour to his friends, or to a living soul.”16 Similar testimony comes from others. Tutini and Verde had heard that he had “had condemned to the torture rope some peasant women from the casali of Naples [peripheral villages], who had come into Naples with a little flour in certain bags, a deed that made the people cruel in his regard.”17 When the lazzari arrived at his palace, they “threw from the windows into the piazza what was in the house, sparing neither tapestries, nor curtains of silk and cloth of gold, nor silver vessels, nor pictures most nobly painted, nor cash, nor any other precious furnishings.”18 The goods, barely listed, proved to all how rich he was and also showed how the “plebeian” Letizia had tried, in his eager climb, to adopt the nobles’ taste.19 The governor of the gabella of flour was the first of a “transverse” class of ex-plebeians, wealthy dottori of law and knights, which had enriched itself thanks to the gabelle; it was universally detested. Masaniello had an important role in punishing it. Letizia, knowing that the lazzari were heading his way, had stowed some 16 Simonetta, Historia delle rivoluzioni di Napoli, f. 21v. Depictions of some of those punished by the fires appear in Anonymous, Sollevatione dell’anno 1647, SNSP, XXII C 6, pp. 199 ff. “Conte Cola.” 17 Tutini-Verde, Racconto della sollevatione, p. 26. 18 Capecelatro, Diario, p. 32. Many notices concerning this and other fires appear in a dossier based on a number of sources: Memorie istoriche degl’Avvenimenti più memorabili accaduti in Napoli nel tempo delle sollevazioni Popolari degl’Anni 1647 e ’48, Naples, BTTN, ms. AR 5 47, pp. 51–74. 19 On the social mimicry practised by the newly rich of Naples, see Gerard Labrot, Baroni in città. Residenze e comportamenti dell’aristocrazia napoletana 1530–1734, with a foreword by Giuseppe Galasso (Naples: Società Editrice Napoletana, 1979). Concerning the merchants Zevallos and Roomer, Labrot writes: “The mimicry is perfect: the same constructed arrogance, the same opulence, an identical display of architectonic objects that demarcate the caste,” pp. 47 ff. See also Gerard Labrot, Palazzi napoletani. Storie di nobili e cortigiani 1520–1750 (Naples: Electa, 1993).

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of his goods in a safe place. The head of the Alarbi heard about this and had them found. He then had them burned by the shore of the Pietra del Pesce: there were infinite pieces of cloth of gold, gold embroidery, and cloth of silk, no end of pieces of saia imperiale [a prized textile], two sideboards of silverware: he had them all burnt, and then they gave the ashes to the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie de la Pietra del Pesce, which sold them for 500 ducats. A little further on, the Anonymous writes that Masaniello told “the plebs that they should manage to find that Geronimo [Letizia], and cut off his head.”20 Meanwhile, our anonymous author was called to Castelnuovo by the viceroy, thanks to a knight he does not name, a friend of his in prison there. To the convened ministers and knights, the viceroy said that he must heed the people’s will and abolish the gabelle. None objected.21 Having decided, he sent some knights to the market to communicate his intentions, but the leaders of the commoners replied that they wanted “the privilege of Charles V.” The cardinal also took steps to arrive at an accord. His brother, a Cappuchin friar, collected the promises he intended to offer the People: electoral parity with the nobility; an indult for all; the election of the Eletto every six months at the hand of the People; the election of food officials at the hand of the People and the nobility together; and, finally, the control of Castel Sant’Elmo, the great hilltop fortess looming over Naples.22 Among the knights at the castle was Diomede Carafa, Duke of Maddaloni. The Casanatense Anonymous recounts that he was unexpectedly summoned from outside, by a crowd of his supporters: “there came a multitude of plebeians, shouting that they wanted the Duke of Maddaloni for their Eletto del Popolo. This was relayed to His Excellency [the viceroy], who was talking with the Duke of Maddaloni and other knights. Having heard the whole of this, he turned to the duke, telling him ‘Duque, muccho [sic] le quiere el Pueblo [in Spanish: the People much loves you]’.”23 So, Maddaloni had leave to go 20 Casanatense Anonymous, Narrazione della rivolta, f. 19v. His report on Masaniello’s actions relies on the detailed record of the eye witess Pollio (Historia del Regno di Napoli, f. 21v). 21 For the Anonymous’s presence at the castle, see the passage already cited: “That morning, as I had been summoned to Castel Novo”: Casanatense Anonymous, Narrazione della rivolta, f. 22v. 22 Giraffi, Le rivolutioni di Napoli, pp. 44–45. 23 Casanatense Anonymous, Narrazione della rivolta, f. 24. For a report of the viceroy’s actions, similar to that of De Santis: “It seemed to the viceroy that indeed this knight, as he pleased many and was feared by many, could with his adroitness engage the mood of the insurgents and placate them.”: Historia del tumulto, p. 62; Simonetta, Historia delle rivoluzioni di Napoli, f. 35v, also wrote: “the people, on seeing him, rejoiced and all shouted ‘Joy! Joy!’ for he had come out of prison.”

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out. According to another version, better known and certainly well-founded, the decision to send the duke to the market was calculated: the duke was little loved by at least some of the People, so his presence might raise them against his class, the knights. “Divide and conquer” always worked.24 Diomede Carafa’s entry into the market was triumphal. Here is one of the fuller accounts: The duke sortied from the castle on horseback, with an open letter in his hands, with His Excellency’s signature, and in a loud voice he was saying, “My people, His Excellency has granted the grace to remove the gabelle.” An infinite crowd swarmed closely after him, walking towards the Piazza di Porto, Lanzieri, Calzettari, Piazza Larga, Loggia, Zavatteria, and he arrived at the market, where he gave the letter to Masaniello, and to Micco Perrone and other heads of the People. They did not want to accept it, but desired to have the Privilege of the Emperor Charles V (as the old Genoino had indoctrinated them to think). Otherwise, they would put the whole nobility to blood and fire.25

The duke promised to bring it to them soon and left. Then came his brother (it is not certain precisely when), who had been in Rome, whom Diomede had clearly summoned fast. His arrival sparked an uproar. “They entered the market and shouted loudly, ‘To arms, to arms, my people. Betrayal! Betrayal!’ He arrived with more than two thousand members of the people around him, and at once the whole market rose up, armed, and all the people of the market gathered together, ten thousand, which created a great tumult, stirring fear, and suspicion.”26 By the time Diomede Carafa returned, things had heated up. Perrone and Masaniello were still at the market, but they took different stances. Perrone had been in Maddaloni’s service, but Masaniello had been abused by men in the duke’s employ.27 Therefore, it was Masaniello who challenged him. He took the imperial privilege Maddaloni brought, handed it to Genoino for inspection, and, when told that it was not the original, did not hesitate to grab the Duke by the arm, forcing him to dismount. “Is this the worth of the word of a knight and 24 According to Modène, Mémoires, p. 73, Carafa was chosen as a mediator, but in reality he was picked as an instrument, in hopes of dividing the people and the nobles. 25 Della Moneca, Istoria delle revoluzioni, f. 24v. 26 Ibid., f. 25v. 27 Capecelatro, Diario, p. 40; for Masaniello’s suffering at the hands of the duke’s men, see also Giuseppe Campolieti, Masaniello. Trionfo e caduta del celebre Capopopolo nella Napoli del Seicento (Milan: Mondadori, 2003), p. 51.

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Duke of Maddaloni, for you gave your word to bring the privilege of Charles V, and you have brought us a false document.” With this act, Masaniello crossed a red line of sorts; everyone then pounced on the Duke: “they lost respect for him, they yanked him from his horse by the chest, laying hands on him. ‘Let’s kill him, this traitor, and let’s drag him, as he is our enemy’.” The duke, “finding himself in such a grave conflict, a thing he had never imagined, made peace with placating words, that he had come for the service of the people, for whom he would lay down his life, and for that reason he was not guilty, and the privilege that they [the palace] had given into his hands was the one he had brought.”28 The duke also reminded them who he was, but they answered back: “What duke? What duke? Now we are equal.”29 Maddaloni was then tied up and entrusted to Perrone, while other knights, who had come to the market with him or soon after, were beaten. “Let’s drag them, these dogs, traitors to the people!”30 Some managed to flee; others were held hostage at Sant’Agostino, seat of the seggio of the People. The crowd shouted at them, “You laid the gabelle on and you take them away. Otherwise, we are resolved to cut you all to pieces, and all the nobility, and to set fire to and demolish all the houses of knights and nobles.” A society that once cohered was split in two. From that moment on, whoever was noble was an enemy, without much distinction. The world had turned upside down, the “medal had been turned over.” Down to a few hours earlier, Della Moneca remarks, the nobility abused the “barefoot people,” “making them die under a club (an unbearable thing by natural law), and now, the medal having been turned over, badly handled, verbally abused, and deeply uneasy, they [the nobles] went back home full of amazement, having become extremely suspect, inimical, and odious to the people, [and] fearful of receiving some kind of punishment, and universal wreck.”31 Masaniello then went into the church of the Carmine to hear what the people wanted to do with that traitor, held captive in Perrone’s hands. Only one witness reports what he said. 28 Della Moneca, Istoria delle revoluzioni, f. 25v. There are other dramatic images of the duke’s experience that day: “At these shouts, up came the most audacious Tommaso Aniello, and he took the privilege from the duke’s hand, and, when he saw it, even though he could not read, from the signs given him by Genoino he saw that it was not the truth. So, he told the duke, ‘Wait, and now I will see if the privilege is true’.” Anonymous, Succinta Relatione della sollevatione di Napoli, f. 77r, and elsewhere. 29 Mayorica, I tumulti e revolutioni, f. 64r. 30 Della Moneca, Istoria delle revoluzioni, f. 26v. 31 Ibid., f. 27r. See also Caputo, Frammenti degli Annali, p. 198, where he says that the plebs began to hate the nobles without distinguishing between those of the seggi and the others. Nevertheless, he adds, “it was the will of God.”

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He called the people into the church of the Carmine and climbed into the pulpit and spoke as follows: “My people, the privilege that the Duke of Maddaloni brought is false, just as he has a false heart against you, and to my judgment it seems to me that such a betrayal should not go unpunished, but, now that we have the traitor in hand, let’s not let him flee, I am inclined to cut off his head, what do you think, my people?” And when they at once said yes, he summoned Perrone to bring the imprisoned man.32

Masaniello asked what people thought about an action that, given the epoch, was entirely unprecedented. One just did not put knights to death. That becomes clear on a page from the Annali of Francesco Capecelatro: “But, when criminal misdeeds happened, one had much respect for the knights, so that it seemed a strange thing to make one of them die, a thing that rarely happened, even if they often committed strange and enormous crimes; little time would have gone by when, having obtained a pardon from the offended party, they easily settled the matter.”33 Perrone then entered the church, alone, and trembling, saying that the duke had slipped his grasp… A black cloud settled on that celebrated bandit leader, who, in the rush of things, had till then been considered the “chief.”34 Perrone was with Palumbo and Basciano. They felt in danger: till then they had been acclaimed but, in a blink, they might be killed. For this reason, they stayed inside the church, except Palumbo, who, as he had plentiful, and arrogant kinfolk in the Conceria district (near the market), was let go.35 To the people it was clear that only young Masaniello had failed to betray them. Once back at the castle, Maddaloni set in motion a move against him. Two days later, it would play out.

3.

The Fires

Meanwhile, the f ires continued. And would go on through Wednesday. After Letizia it was the turn of many others who had become rich thanks to the gabelle. It is worth noting some of them. One of these was Felice 32 Anonymous, Succinta Relatione della sollevatione di Napoli, f. 78v. 33 Capecelatro, Degli Annali, pp. 2 ff. 34 Simonetta, Historia delle rivoluzioni di Napoli, f. 32v: “He (Perrone) was a very selfish man, and for that reason, Masaniello himself agreed that he should be chief.” See, likewise, Donzelli, Partenope liberata, p. 16. 35 Della Moneca, Istoria delle revoluzioni, f. 37r.

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Basile. Starting off as the poor assistant at a bread shop, he rented a bread-right called the ius panizandi, which taxed white bread. He soon waxed rich.36 Chroniclers domiciled in Naples record his rise. “This fellow, from a pauper, and vile baker who in the beginning carried on his shoulders bread through Naples, with the imposed gabelle, and with pacts made with the royal court, in a short time had gradually become extremely rich.” (Giraff i is quoted here, but see also Tutini and Verde, and Simonetta).37 Abandoning his origins, Felice had also forgotten pity. The Casanatense Anonymous tells his reader friend very eloquent anecdotes. Among others, he explains, “when some pauper told him, ‘Signor Felice, this bread, one cannot eat it!’ he would answer, ‘And you, eat shit, which has a better taste’.” The lazzari burned everything, all the goods he had piled up in recent years. “He lived near Spirito Santo [on Via Toledo]. When the people arrived, and the whole palace had been emptied from top to bottom, it also threw from the windows a great lot of writing tables, chairs, apparatus, and infinite gallant stuff.” Trunks, falling to the ground, sprang open, spewing forth “the most delicate white-wear, precious clothing, rich hangings for the rooms, door hangings, drapes, bed-pavillions, and rich furnishings of damask, of cloth of gold and of silver, and of brocade.”38 Angry at Felice Basile, “Mas Aniello tried to capture him to have him dragged through Naples. It was impossible to catch him, as he had taken refuge in the castle with the viceroy.”39 Then came the turn of Francesco Antonio de Angelis, who had gone to the market on 6 June to look for another place in which to set the house of the gabella on fruit. His present position as “councillor” was the culmination of a brilliant career at the side of the viceroys, from Monterey (1631–1637) on down. 40 What of his was burned? Many writings, and trial transcripts, which were in that house, besides a sumptuous library worth many thousands of scudi: they gave all of that to 36 Fuidoro, Successi historici, p. 32. See also Della Moneca, Istoria delle revoluzioni, f. 27r; Simonetta, Historia delle rivoluzioni di Napoli, f. 57v. 37 Giraffi, Le rivolutioni di Napoli, p. 52. See also Tutini-Verde, Racconto della sollevatione, p. 27; Simonetta, Historia delle rivoluzioni di Napoli, f. 21v. 38 Giraffi, Le rivolutioni di Napoli, p. 53. 39 Casanatense Anonymous, Narrazione della Rivolta, f. 30v. 40 It was also thanks to Francesco Antonio de Angelis that Viceroy Monterey was able to bring in so many gabelle: “In his time in off ice as Eletto all he did was lay gabelle on the people.”: Tutini-Verde, Racconto della sollevatione, p. 27.

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the flames, down to his two carriages, having first disemboweled four very beautiful horses, and two female mules that he had in his stables, which they then threw on the fire, which was made greater, and encouraged, with the straw and hay that they found in his house, and they threw a great quantity of oil atop it to make it burn better, with all the goods in a great store of things to eat, along with a great quantity of sweets. Among those goods, when a boy took a piece of lard, which, because of the ferocity of the fire shot out into the street, the multitude of the people went after him with so many spankings of their swords that they left him half dead, and they took from him that bit of lard, and, leading him to the fire, into which they threw also ten thousand silver scudi that, thanks to the secret information had from a servant of the aforesaid councillor, they found in the stables under the manure. 41

This last episode is only one of many recounted that argue that Masaniello’s order to take nothing from the fires was carried out. That the lazzari obeyed perhaps does not seem striking to us today. It did cause wonder at the time, and it moved the witnesses, more given to pity, who knew well how those men and women went seeking sustenance, and how sorely they suffered from hunger. There is a very suggestive passage in a letter that the Modenese resident (ambassador) wrote his master: “the people, even though hungry, also burned the things to eat. And the naked people threw on the flames the cloth that could have covered them.”42 Masaniello, knowing that de Angelis had hidden many objects “of gold and of silver” behind a door of his house, had it (the dwelling) taken apart, and then ordered that all one found be burnt. There was talk of thousands of ducats lost. 43 Like de Angelis, dottore Antonio Miroballo was eager for the viceroy’s attention. At the beginning, he was just courteous, and then, so to say, he forded the stream and began to use his culture and savoir faire on the viceroy’s behalf. 44 Recently, he had obtained the “delegation” of the flour gabella of the casali, the rural settlements just outside the city. For this, he made himself hated by all the poor: “every day they cried vendetta.” When the lazzari reached his house, “they burned everything of his that he had 41 Giraffi, Le rivolutioni di Napoli, pp. 54–55. 42 Francesco Ottonelli, Lettera del 9 di luglio, Modena, ASM, Cancelleria Estense, Ambasciatori Napoli, Busta 24, folios not numbered. 43 Casanatense Anonymous, Narrazione della rivolta, f. 32. 44 The Casanatense Anonymous says of Miroballo: “He was a most gallant man, very courteous, compassionate, and then, falling into the original sin of ambition, he too went around arranging that the seggi consented to gabelle.” (f. 33). Thus, for the author, he became “a new, lawless Nero.”

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accumulated in many years.”45 Nevertheless, like the Arabian phoenix, 46 Miroballo would rise again. More able than Miroballo was the Eletto del popolo, Andrea Naclerio, who well knew what was about to happen. The Eletto was, writes Donzelli, “most odious to the people” because, simply, “they had not elected him to that office.” He had received the job from his brother, Giambattista, who had been Eletto del popolo back in Medina’s day and then, in gratitude for his backing, had become judge of the Vicaria. The brother had been Eletto for more than five years, and then for a good eight years Andrea held the post, as Donzelli notes, “even though it was supposed to last six months only.” “He was kept there for eight years, because he adhered continually to the will of the viceroy, who (with the exception of the Admiral of Castile) could never be tired of such impositions.”47 One can understand the people’s anger. The lazzari found little in Naclerio’s house, but they destroyed the statues, the enchanting fountains, and the flower beds of the garden, where he enjoyed his status as a knight. 48 The most illustrious victims of popular anger, nevertheless, were the Duke of Caivano, Giovann’Angelo Barile, and his two sons, Francesco and Antonio. The duke was particularly hated by Genoino, because, after his exile, he had blocked his readmission into the college of dottori. Still, his burning-out and the fires that attacked his sons saw substantial popular participation, a sign that all three were widely detested. Della Moneca portrays the duke as a sort of Tartuffe before his time, a pious fraud worthy of Molière: “he negotiated like a saint and despoiled the altars” and “he always had rosaries in hand, but introduced gabelle at the expense of the poor.”49 Giraffi’s pages on this fire are well-known, above all his portrayal of the women who took part. Eager to punish him, to reduce to ashes the property of these “starvers of the people” even with the little straw that they still had 45 Anonymous, Storia di Masaniello, f. 15v, who here continues to seem well informed. 46 Miroballo, a phoenix, was indeed nominated regent in 1659; see Imma Ascione, “Nota,” in Francesco d’Andrea, Avvertimenti ai nipoti, edited by Imma Ascione, introduction by Raffaele Ajello (Naples: Jovene, 1990), p. 340; Salvo Mastellone, Francesco D’Andrea politico e giurista (1648–1698). L’ascesa del ceto civile (Florence: Olschki, 1969). 47 Donzelli, Partenope liberata, p. 19; similar denunciations of how the Naclerio brothers had for “twenty years” surfed the political wave appear in Pollio’s writings, even though that cleric was close to Andrea; Andrea Naclerio and his brother, he writes, “ruled, both of them, for twenty years in the Electorate of the People” and brought in many taxes: Pollio, Historia del Regno di Napoli, f. 29v. 48 Anonymous, Storia di Masaniello, f. 15v; Della Moneca, Istoria delle revoluzioni, f. 27v, is important for its details on the Naclerio houses. 49 Pollio, Historia del Regno di Napoli, f. 31v.

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in the stables, they urged their own children, whom they held by hand, to throw into the flames little pieces of sulphur, saying that they, too, should take part in this “function.” They shouted, “these poor little innocent lambs will be the first to take revenge for the bread stolen from them by these thieves.”50 Friar Giacomo Mayorica saw a child of three or four years, who “carried a handful of sulphur matches and a club in hand and followed after the others.” The friar asked him where he was going and he answered, “I want to set fire to the goods of Caivano because our blood is there.” To the friar it was a sign that the fire was God’s wish. Children knew what to do.51 The incendiaries destroyed everything Caivano had, including a library containing “books of all the sciences, and one could not set a price on it, because it was composed for the most part of rare books richly bound with crimson leather garnished with gold, with the crest of the Barile family, a work that had a touch of the royal.”52 Dottore della Moneca had heard that the Duke of Caivano had been found at his own house, and that he had knelt before the lazzari imploring them to destroy his goods but let him live. But it is likely that the anecdote was just a fancy of those who recounted the potent duke’s miserable end.53 There was also immense damage at the palace of the duke’s first-born, Francesco, to whom Camillo Tutini had earlier dedicated his treatise on the seggi.54 Francesco, too, writes Tutini, who probably frequented his house, had “a good library of rather curious books.” The young man, “for grief, and for the damage suffered, died almost desperate.”55 Also at Caivano, a village some miles north of Naples, people knew that the wind had shifted. The tenants of Giovann’Angelo and Francesco lost no time; they went to Masaniello to complain of bad treatment, and he sent some men from Naples, an expedition outside the city walls.56 50 Giraffi, Le rivolutioni di Napoli, p. 83. 51 Mayorica, I tumulti e revolutioni, f. 65r. 52 Donzelli, Partenope liberata, p. 23. 53 Later, the Duke of Caivano was an active participant in the repression, thanks to the long train of havoc following upon on the fires: Alfonso Fiordelisi, Gl’incendii in Napoli ai tempi di Masaniello (Naples: L. Pierro, 1895), p. 13. 54 See the dedication to Francesco Barile at the beginning of Tutini’s treatise on the seggi. Since that time (1644) the crisis had broken out. So, Tutini does not hesitate to say that Francesco’s ducal father was much hated by the people: Tutini-Verde, Racconto della sollevatione, p. 37. 55 Ibid. and Fuidoro, Successi historici, p. 31. 56 Tutini-Verde, Racconto della sollevatione, p. 37. Della Moneca, Istoria delle revoluzioni, f. 31r, states that a “son of the people of base condition” had gone to Masaniello to complain of mistreatment in the Naccarella house, and Masaniello had commanded that Naccarella’s goods be burned.

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As we have said, the people and the plebs saw the fires as a kind of justice. They punished those who had enriched themselves at their expense in a way that God could not abide. For many, the fires were “sacrosanct,” aiming at the construction of an order that should rest on the good old ethical values that seemed to have abandoned the city. Moreover, the fires respected the norms – not to rob, and not to destroy sacred images or portraits of the king of Spain, or of earlier Spanish sovereigns, all actions that aimed to give the people in revolt respect, to give faith to their chiefs, and to prove that they really were turning the world upside down. From the chronicles it is clear that all this reflected well on Masaniello, who was very visible in those f irst days of revolt. Della Moneca records that he sent for Cesare Lubrano, a man of humble origins but by then rich and almost noble (his sons had become noble). Masaniello told him: “it is no great thing, the loss of moveable goods, being born a lowly man, and poor, and now grown so rich. I order that, tomorrow, you must send me one hundred thousand ducats under pain of death, and of having all your children and your wife burnt.” Lubrano at once sent him 12,000, reassuring him that he would give him the rest, but did not do so, because Masaniello was killed only a few days later.57 Hour by hour, there spread what one nameless writer calls “the fear of Masaniello.”58 Some, under its effect, burned their own goods or joined the other side. That happened to the son of Giuseppe Sportiello, who, having had some furnishings burned, “went to the market, attached himself to Masaniello as an adjutant, mounted with a staff, acting as a Capopopolo with Masaniello.” Fuidoro speaks of “fear” but also of “love” for Masaniello: “It was of [i.e. it struck] such fear, this action toward the people and toward the burners, that they did not steal or occupy anything, for they punished it [i.e. theft] with rigour and everyone praised the way; and that was the reason why Masaniello acquired love and fear, that everybody obeyed his orders and did not violate them.”59 This explains the great support also given, for now, to his little soldiers, the “incendiaries,” as Friar Mayorica tells us: 57 Della Moneca, Istoria delle revoluzioni, f. 30v. 58 So far, it is a matter of objective fear, of Masaniello himself. Later, we shall deal with other fears. On this, see Aurelio Musi, “Le paure di Masaniello,” in Storia e paura. Immaginario collettivo, riti e rappresentazioni della paura in età moderna, edited by Laura Guidi, Maria Rosaria Pelizzari and Lucia Valenzi (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1992), pp. 219–229. 59 Fuidoro, Successi historici, p. 25. Fuidoro’s terms here, “love and fear,” evoke those of Machiavelli, who, in The Prince posed the famous question, whether it was better for a prince to be loved or feared.

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they carried to them wagons with barrels of wine, to make use of when they were thirsty, and everyone gave them food to eat, and they lacked no victuals where they went, and most kept busy and ate from their hands. They went for the most part in the taverns and sat at table and they were given all the food that was there without paying a soldo [a penny].60

60 Mayorica, I tumulti e revolutioni, f. 66r.

V. Among the Great Abstract Masaniello cooperates with the cardinal and Genoino, to draft some capitoli, granting rights that the people were keen, otherwise, to achieve by force. Naples, writes an anonymous observer, seemed like the Roman Republic. A new grassiere, in charge of food supply, and a new eletto del popolo are chosen, men who have the nod of Masaniello’s chief advisors. The young leader is given to accommodation. The cardinal, wishing to seem a canny mediator, rather than a supporter of the people’s wishes, as he really is, persuades Masaniello, says one source, to give up his claim to powerful Castel Sant’Elmo, left in royal hands. That, for the popular alliance, is a grave strategic error. Keywords: Cardinal Filomarino, Capitoli, Neapolitan plebs, public discussion

1

Letting it Happen

“Signò Masaniello! Signò Masaniello!” Friar Sebastiano (Alessandro Molini) had been robbed of bread and he sought justice. It was the morning of 9 July. Masaniello came to the window of his house, heard what had happened, and invited the friar up. Then he reassured him: he ordered the crowd to find the thief who had barely escaped from the friar’s hand, and, in no time, it goes without saying, the man was delivered to Masaniello. “You are the first and I forgive you.” And then he said to me [the friar recounts], ‘Go with this man who will give you your bread, and if he will not give it to you come back to me, and I will give you justice. My Fra’ Sebastiano, you know that I love you and if you need anything, give me the order’.”1 Masaniello, on 9 July, two days into the uprising, now that Perrone’s and Palumbo’s stars had set, was already the capo, the chief, as emerges from 1 Molini, Racconto, p. 42.

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this and other stories, which relate how he climbed onto the stage and intervened. He reiterated, above all, the order that no one “dare to rob or disturb the city,” threatening those who disobeyed that he would have “their ears cut off.” The first to be caught in the act were five military captains of the people, “who had not carried justly some goods taken in some houses ordered by him. He had their long hair cut and forgave the amputation of the ear, at the prayers of many of his friends.”2 He also sought to furnish the city with food: the population was in arms and it was necessary to see to feeding it. Masaniello ordered Carlo Catania to make some searches in the borgo of Loreto, where he knew that there were “loads of biscuit” left by Felice Basile. Catania obeyed and sent confirmation. Soon the people came running and took it all in hand.3 The cardinal, meanwhile, had been summoned to the castle by the viceroy. Afterwards, he wrote a dispatch to the pope: I talked to him rather frankly, so as to feel out the gravity of the affair. My interview had the effect that, on Tuesday morning, by the eletti of the city there were brought to me the privileges that the people desired, always denied them by the viceroy and the Collateral Council, who said that they did not exist. And without them it would be impossible to bring the people to any sort of quiet. At the very moment that they came into my hands, I went off to the convent of the Carmine. 4

The chroniclers say that the cardinal arrived at the Carmine with the privilege of Charles V (some claim that it was the original, others that it was a copy).5 He was at once surrounded by a crowd of men and women; he said that he had the privilege of Charles V, but few believed him. There ensued some minutes of confusion. In the end, Masaniello took the floor: Most Eminent Lord, this people believes that these privileges are not the real ones, and that Your Eminence wants to trick us, but I do not believe it, and I want to revolt against them in your defence, or even kill myself by

2 Della Moneca, Istoria delle revoluzioni, f. 34r. 3 Ibid., f. 36r. 4 Filomarino, Lettere, p. 383. In his letter to the pontiff, the nuncio gives the same report, but does not mention a conversation between the cardinal and the viceroy: ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Napoli, vol. 42, f. 335r. 5 Tutini-Verde, Racconto della sollevatione, p. 34.

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my own hand, knowing well how much Your Eminence is a scrupulously correct [puntuale] Lord.6

The cardinal answered with firmness: My dear son, these privileges are the very ones of Charles V and precisely those that the populace desires, but because it should be kept sincere by my correct procedure, let’s do as follows: give me a person of intelligence to whom you wish me to consign it, and I will consign it, leaving it in his hands, and as a sign of truth I don’t want to leave here until this business is made clear: that way you will know that I consider you all as my children, just as much as I do the knights, and, as shepherd and common father, I would willingly shed my blood for my whole people, and for the peace, and the quiet of my beloved fatherland.7

This “person of intelligence” was inside the church: it was Genoino. When he looked, he did not hesitate. This was, he said, the very privilege of Charles V. According to De Santis, a prayer by the viceroy to help produce a settlement may have got through to him, in exchange for a substantial reward.8 Certainly, there was an accord between the cardinal and Genoino stronger than any between either the dottore or the cardinal and Masaniello, despite their esteem for his vivacity and pluck. The young man was one of the barefoot: he died, wrote Piacente, before he “learned how to rule.” In this formulation, “to rule” lay rather close to “dissimulate.” “He who does not know how to dissimulate does not know how to rule,” wrote in 1641 Torquato Accetto, the Neapolitan author of Della dissimulazione onesta. The Casanatense Anonymous furnishes a very telling detail about the parts played by these three – the cardinal, Genoino, and the young man from the Lavinaio – in devising the requests soon presented to the viceroy. The story attests to malleability on Masaniello’s part, a “virtue” in the eyes of Camillo Tutini, one of the city’s most educated men. Says the Anonymous, “Whatever this Giulio [Genoino] laid out with the lord Cardinal Filamarino, he approved it and was content, as Masaniello had told him many times that he wanted of His Excellency nothing but a general indult for the people, and all the gabelle abolished. He [Genoino] made him shift, that it was good to lay out several 6 Giraffi, Le rivolutioni di Napoli, pp. 72–73, and also Donzelli, Partenope liberata, p. 28. 7 Giraffi, Le rivolutioni di Napoli, p. 73. 8 As we shall see, Genoino later became president of the Camera della Sommaria, a high court: De Santis, Historia del tumulto, p. 77.

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stipulations for the service of the people, and he made the cardinal say that too. Masaniello consented that they do whatever fostered the people’s good.”9 Masaniello was sure that in both the dottore and the cardinal he had extraordinary councillors whom he could trust. It seemed to him that both had at heart the good of the people, and that was true, but later, to both, his removal from the political scene would come to seem necessary. Via the more detailed accounts, we shall see how those choices came about. Here is what the Reverend Pollio, who would side with the revolt, reports: Masaniello asked dottore Genoino to suggest to him a name, among those who might take the Eletto del popolo job, lost by Naclerio. And Genoino spoke of his old friend Arpaia: “We have the first man of the world, but I don’t know if he will come, who is born in the Market, named Capitan Francesco Antonio Arpaia, presently governor of Teverola in Aversa, who, for his service to the people, was imprisoned with me in Spain for so many years.” Then Masaniello consulted “his people.” When he heard this, Thomaso Anello said, from up on that pulpit, “My people, they tell me that there is Francesco Arpaia, a captain, a man of the sword born at the Market, a good man who has been so long in prison in Spain, tried for his service to the people by the knights in the time of the Duke of Osuna [1616–1620]. We, through me, wish to summon him, as he is at Teverola, and let’s make him Eletto del popolo.” Everyone said, “Signore, yes, this is good, for he is no friend of the knights and he is from the Market.”10

Naples seemed, so wrote a chronicler who was there, the old “Roman Republic.” The people took part in “political life”; it selected its own “tribunes”: It was a marvellous thing to see Tomaso Aniello in the dress of a fishseller, in his shirt, barefoot, with a red cloth hat on his head, and a pair of leggings, made capo of so numerous a people of plebs, and the civil [respectable] sort, like this of Naples, and to see him up on a stage giving public audience to everybody, and the respect that everyone accorded his commands was an act beyond prodigious, so much that the City of Naples seemed to have become the ancient Roman Republic.11 9 Casanatense Anonymous, Narrazione della rivolta, f. 28v. 10 Pollio, Le rivoluzioni del Regno, f. 25r. According to Capecelatro, p. 62, Arpaia was chosen “in place of Donato Grimaldo, capitano della strada of Selleria.” This is one more confirmation of the influence of Genoino on the political-institutional features of the revolt. 11 Anonymous, Succinta Relatione della sollevatione di Napoli, f. 80v.

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The choice of the Eletto was then submitted to the viceroy, who answered “magnanimously,” summoning Arpaia from Teverola, where he lived, via the bishop of Aversa (the nearby town), a man of the noble Carafa. Arpaia, thought the viceroy, might well be more trustworthy than others, given his link to Genoino, who recognized his prudence.12 The election of the grassiere, overseer of food supplies, came about under the cardinal’s influence and played out in like fashion. Pre-chosen by the cardinal himself, Francesco Maria Filomarino, prince of La Rocca, was the son of Marcantonio, the cardinal’s uncle.13 The prince wavered, fearing the plebs’ boldness and the court’s hatred, but the viceroy himself insisted: better than any others could he shoulder this delicate assignment. In this affair too, Masaniello played mediator. Tutini and Verde reconstruct the scene: they were at the Carmine when they began to discuss the matter of a new grassiere. Masaniello threw out the name of the prince of Montesarchio, Andrea d’Avalos. Schipa links his proposal with the fact that Andrea’s father, Giovanni, had been Eletto in viceroy Osuna’s day. But positive assessments of Andrea d’Avalos may have circulated among those most keen to battle the court, for he was a noble, though cautious, who criticized the government’s policies.14 In any case, the cardinal turned d’Avalos down, for he had set his mind on his cousin, prince della Rocca, for whom he answered firmly, “why go looking for the prince of Montesarchio, if you want a prince, to make him grassiere. Here there is one who is a worthy man,” and pointed the man out to Masaniello, who, very devoted to the cardinal, hurried up to the cousin.15 “Are you a prince? And are you a worthy man?” Filomarino answered, “By 12 De Santis, Historia del tumulto, pp. 77-78. 13 Information on Francesco Filomarino (born in 1600) appears in Loredana Lorizzo, “Simon Vouet, Valentin e i Filomarino. Nuove date e qualche ipotesi sugli scambi artistici tra Roma e Napoli nella prima metà del Seicento,” in Ricerche per il ’600 napoletano. Saggi e documenti 2003/2004 (Naples: Electa Napoli, 2004), pp. 123–136, at p. 131. Note that two brothers of the cardinal (Francesco Maria Filomarino, Capuchin friar, and Gennaro, bishop of Calvi) “on some occasions” were close to the “popular movement”: see Villari, Un sogno di libertà, p. 415. Detailed news on the family can be found in Mrozeck Eliszezynski, Ascanio Filomarino, pp. 20 ff. 14 Schipa, “La così detta rivoluzione di Masaniello,” in Schipa, Studi masanielliani, p. 379. For the prince’s conduct, see also Rovito, Il viceregno spagnolo di Napoli, p. 100. In any case, clearly the prince had been rejected by the plebs a little earlier, along with other knights who came to the market: Simonetta, Historia delle rivoluzioni di Napoli, f. 32v. So, Masaniello gives signs of having known something more, a sign that Genoino and the other dottori had been steering him. 15 Tutini-Verde, Racconto della sollevatione, p. 35. For this election, as fruit of Filomarino’s work, see Galasso, Il Regno di Napoli, p. 305.

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the grace of God, that I am.” And Masaniello then said, “Upon my faith, you must be grassiere.” And, embracing him, he gave him a kiss.16 The prince was terrified. In the hours that followed, the word goes, he tried to learn what the Duke of Arcos thought, as he wanted no trouble thanks to his turbulent cousin, as once befell him when he quarrelled with Viceroy Medina, and like others of his kinsmen, had indeed been persecuted. With the viceroy’s assent, he grudgingly accepted the role.17 This version seems rather plausible. But, keep in mind, in those hours the name of Cornelio Spinola was also proposed for Eletto. According to De Santis, Masaniello asked the viceroy to alert Spinola, as was done. Yet, when his men paid a call, Spinola, the consul of Genoa, in the politest terms, calling himself the “good servant” of the “Most Illustrious Masaniello,” turned the proposal down, explaining that he was elderly, and that it was no good thing that a foreigner be made Eletto del popolo. The pressure went on awhile, but Spinola soon dodged this trap, for good.18 At this time (Tuesday, 9 July) the cardinal also scored another success. As befitted his role, he worked lest the people assume extreme positions. At stake was control of the great fortress looming over Naples. In the manuscript Storia di Masaniello, one reads: And, among other things, they asked to have in hand the keys and the control of Castel Sant’Elmo. In the end, His Eminence convinced them that in truth this could not happen, because, according to royal orders the castellan could not obey His Excellency [the viceroy] conceding it [the king’s fortress] to others. In the end, recognizing the injustice of the demand, and that, with this claim, they would be falling into rebellion, they were contented with being granted the power to go armed, and to keep the artillery pieces in their quarters of the city until such time as His Majesty confirmed what the Signor Viceroy was promising.19

The Casanatense Anonymous tells us more about this affair. The cardinal’s intervention and Masaniello’s retreat checked a machine in motion. The day before, Andrea Polito, who controlled a store of gunpowder on the San Martino hill,20 had received from Masaniello two full companies to take 16 Tutini-Verde, Racconto della sollevatione, pp. 35–36. 17 De Santis, Historia del tumulto, p. 85. 18 Ibid. Afterwards, however, Spinola did not withhold support from Vincenzo d’Andrea: Musi, Mercanti genovesi nel Regno di Napoli, pp. 115 ff.; Brancaccio, “Nazione genovese,” pp. 144 ff. 19 Anonymous, Storia di Masaniello, f. 21r. 20 Fuidoro, Successi historici, p. 38.

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Sant’Elmo. He had made sorties, clashing with men, sent by the viceroy, determined to hold the castle. That day, however, Masaniello, having heard what Polito told him, thanked him, and made him captain of four compagnie, with the order not to do anything else to that castle.21 The Casanatense Anonymous tells us nothing more, but what we read in the Storia di Masaniello seems credible: the cardinal induced Masaniello to give up on Sant’Elmo, however much some of the people coveted it, by making them understand that, if they kept asking for a castle under royal command, the revolt of the “most faithful people” would become a rebellion. The renunciation of the castle stirred a lively argument. Tutini and Verde speak of a public, heated protest by dottore Pietro Iavarone, of Sant’Antimo (some eight miles north). It could well be true: Tutini and the dottore, both hostile to the Spaniards, would share the same fate, to be hunted by the Spaniards after the city fell. Their names show up in the “List of the rebels of the revolution of Masaniello, who took refuge in France and came with the French fleet, resided in Rome and came back to this kingdom after the general pardon.”22 Dottore Iavarone wanted to tell Masaniello, who was on the wooden stage, that it was folly to give up on Sant’Elmo. The young illiterate tried to bring him around, taking him by the hand and explaining what the cardinal had told him, that it was “rebellion” to request the castle.23 The dottore lost patience, saying that this was no matter to discuss with one so ignorant. The Capopopolo nevertheless tried to content him, spelling out, as Iavarone desired, that the instructions they were writing at the market also covered the outlying villages, the casali.

2.

“Capitan Generale”

That Tuesday, the people confronted attacks by troops obviously called by the viceroy, who was pursuing an agreement but would still have been delighted to see things swiftly return to normal. The viceroy, says Modène, was behaving like those who build structures in the sea, and “to lay a sound 21 Casanatense Anonymous, Narrazione della rivolta, f. 40v. 22 In the list one finds the name of Tutini, but not of Verde, and of “Ciavarone,” [i.e. Iavarone]: Elenco de’ ribelli della rivoluzione di Masniello che si refuggiarono in Francia, tradotto dallo spagnolo, translated by Emmanuele Palermo: one can find it, among other places, in the last pages of the work by Tommaso Fiore, Racconto de tumulti popolari, Naples, ms. SNSP, XXVIII B 16, pp. 1–241; p. 374. 23 Tutini-Verde, Racconto della sollevatione, pp. 40–41.

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foundation, throw an infinity of great stones without a plan, hoping that the number, more than the order, will bring the work success.”24 Warned that soldiers were coming from Capua, Masaniello sent Onofrio Cafiero, a bragging roughneck from Santa Lucia, with an ample company, swollen along the route by many country folk. Catching sight of the troops, they attacked and, thanks to strength in numbers, swiftly had the better of them. Cafiero then disarmed the soldiers and led them to the market, to Masaniello. He did not want them punished. Rather, he had them fed and set them free, in exchange for the promise that they would not dare betray the people. They were later seen wandering through Naples, amazed at the shops and at their marvelous new low prices.25 Then other troops moved in from the south, led by General Prospero Tuttavilla. This time, Masaniello intervened, with many men of the Market. They clashed well southeast of the town, at Pietrabianca; the Spanish soldiers shut themselves in the church of Santa Maria di Costantinopoli, in the coastal town of Torre del Greco, but Masaniello, undaunted, fired on the door. He would later seek pardon for this trespass in the capitoli (the new rules of governance that the Popolo wanted in exchange for peace “with arms in ther hands”). It was another extraordinary success, thanks to the unstoppable ardour of this young man devoting all his forces to the revolt, almost becoming, as Piacente suggests, “his own enemy.” At the “troops’” return to the market, says Della Moneca, who was tracking the events, thousands shouted “‘Viva Masaniello, Viva Masaniello, Capitan Generale,’ and from this he acquired the title of Capitan Generale.”26 In the meantime, the people had conquered San Lorenzo, which housed both the city archive and the heavy artillery. The cannons were carried out and stationed around the city: at San Lorenzo, at Porta Maggiore di San Paolo, at San Biagio dei Librai, and elsewhere.27 The entire common people was with Masaniello, and others too. At the end of his pages on that second day of the revolt, Giraffi writes: Meanwhile, Masaniello was having greater sway than ever over the entire people; as they discovered that he had great spirit and eagerness, he became in their eyes, from one hour to the next, easier to love and worthier of respect, even though in that great multitude of thousands and 24 Modène, Mémoires, p. 73. 25 Donzelli, Partenope liberata, p. 27, for the soldiers marvelling at the plenty: “seeing that great abundance, they went through the streets eating, saying, with great joy ‘Viva Masaniello’.” 26 Della Moneca, Istoria delle revoluzioni, f. 18r. 27 Giraffi, Le rivolutioni di Napoli, pp. 69–70, and also Fuidoro, Successi historici, p. 37.

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thousands of persons, there were so many dottori, merchants, notaries, scribes, judges, procurators, physicians, soldiers, honoured artisans, and infinite men of ingenuity, courage, and experience, and all of them of higher social condition than he, but from Tuesday and for all the days that followed, in the name of the whole people it was he who negotiated with the Signor Cardinal about the affairs at hand, and because he did it with great spirit and efficacity, not only was His Eminence impressed by it, but it was also a reason why the people trusted him ever more, acclaiming him for that reason their first chief and Capitan Generale.28

We must be mindful that the savvy cardinal did not want his role as barrier to falter; that very evening, between Tuesday and Wednesday, he convinced Masaniello to cancel from the list a full 36 houses marked down for swift combustion, among them those of illustrious knights.29 Capecelatro records that the Spinelli and Brancaccio houses were saved. Carlo Brancaccio, as we remember, had the “delegation” of the flour gabella. Also saved were the residences of the Duke of Maddaloni, who had just slipped Perrone’s hand, of Ferrante Caracciolo, of the Prince della Rocca (perhaps this cousin of the cardinal had early on been considered an “enemy” of the people, or perhaps he was threatened with fire because reluctant to shoulder the post of grassiere). Also saved were the dwellings of the regents of the Consiglio Collaterale, gentlemen named Zufia and Casanate.30 It is as if the cardinal wished, from one side, for the people to secure an undertaking on the viceroy’s part to engage with them, while, from the other side, he tried to seem loyal to the knights, even if among them were men whom he had challenged openly, such as Capecelatro and the Duke of Maddaloni, in the episodes we just portrayed.31 In the chapters that follow, we will see that the following day would not shelter Masaniello from the reaction of a part of that world he had damaged and threatened. 28 Giraffi, Le rivolutioni di Napoli, p. 79. 29 For the cardinal’s claim to his success at saving houses, see his own letter of 12 July, to the pope: Filomarino, Lettere, p. 383. In accord with these facts, on that day Genoino issued a decree that, after explaining that on that day “graces” had been read out at the Carmine, prohibited the fires: “Henceforth, let no person dare damage any house of this most faithful city, and its districts [borghi], whether with fire or with other means.”: Raccolta di bandi, Napoli, BNN, X B 92, f. 49. 30 Giraffi, Le rivolutioni di Napoli, pp. 74, mentions 36 houses. See also Capecelatro, Diario, pp. 37, 49–50. 31 Tontoli, Il Mas’Aniello, p. 62, praises the cardinal for these actions: “so that worthy prince, with actions holy and generous, made himself dear to men and to God.” In 1663, Tontoli became Bishop of Ruvo, a town near Bari; see D’Alessio, “Tontoli, Gabriele,” DBI, 96 (2019), pp. 202–205, with the basic bibliography.

VI. A Plot and the Death of Peppe Carafa Abstract Events remain tumultuous. Some knights, unwilling to approve the capitoli, decide, in accord with the viceroy, to kill Masaniello and to punish the people of the low quarters. One chronicler furnishes wellknown names of plotters. There is a failed attempt on Masaniello’s life, in the church of the Carmine, at the hands of bandits led by the Perrone brothers. The cardinal is again ambiguous and cagey; a bandit is found in his room. The seventeenth-century sources let us piece together minutely one of the revolt’s most dramatic days, topped off with the murder of Peppe Carafa, one of the proudest nobles in Naples. Keywords: conspiracy, miracle, nobles, bandits, Peppe Carafa, Madonna of the Carmine.

1. Project The morning of Wednesday, 10 July, Masaniello made the newly fashioned “army” parade through the principal streets of Naples. More than 100,000 marched, among them thousands of women. The women, in their unaccustomed role, seemed sure of themselves and resolute, as if to say, “Even the women know how to take up arms, and to fight for the fatherland.”1 The spectacle troubled the viceroy and knights shut inside the castle, but they already had a plan. For the coming afternoon was the appointed time to read the capitoli, the list of things the people asked for, at the church of the Carmine.2 For this event, under cover of a proffered hand to Masaniello, 1 Giraffi, Le rivolutioni di Napoli, p. 70. The great part played by women in the revolt has been noted as an important, extraordinary phenomenon in Romeo De Maio, “La condizione della donna a Napoli,” in Luigi De Rosa and Luis Miguel Enciso Recio, Spagna e Mezzogiorno d’Italia nell’età della transizione. Classi sociali e fermenti culturali (1650–1760) (Naples: Esi, 1997), vol. II, pp. 79–89. 2 Giraffi, Le rivolutioni di Napoli, p. 84.

D’Alessio, S. Masaniello. The Life and Afterlife of a Neapolitan Revolutionary Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2022 doi: 10.5117/9789463721455_ch06

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the bandit, Miccaro Perrone had stepped in. He had slipped bandits into Naples by the hundreds, claiming that they were indispensable for the people’s safety. The manoeuvre had awakened strong suspicion: dottore Javarone had warned Masaniello the day before, and Masaniello told Perrone to “walk a straight path” with him.3 But, once set in motion, the machinery could not be halted. On Wednesday, while Masaniello was awaiting the reading of the capitoli, at Vespers or a little before, some bandits fired several harquebus shots at him, but failed to touch him.4 He at once pursued the assailants, who sought refuge in the convent of the Carmine, shouting “treason” several times. The people pounced on others inside the church, killing them by dozens, even by the altar and on the altar table. Their anger was immense. The bandits revealed that the whole affair traced to the Carafa brothers, treated harshly two days before. Many partisans believed that the viceroy and the cardinal were also in on the plot. We know for sure that the viceroy was indeed one of the plotters. For the cardinal, the story is a good deal longer and more complex; we will soon see how. Meanwhile, a passage from the Della Moneca chronicle, about those who took part in the plot, pays reading:5 As this set of capitoli did not content the eletti of the city and the knights of the seggi of Naples, nor others with an interest in the gabelle and in royal affairs, for they saw that they were losing their liberty, zone of action, and authority, [and were put] on a level playing field with the people, with the consent and desire of His Excellency the Duke of Arcos, many titled men, knights and other nobles of the People [i.e. of civic Naples] resolved that before they read and signed the said capitoli they would have Masaniello killed and punish and destroy the ‘People by Agreement of the Plebs’ [Popolo plebiscita] of the [districts of] Mercato, Lavinaio, Conceria 3 Tutini-Verde, Racconto della sollevatione, p. 41. 4 Della Moneca, Istoria delle revoluzioni, f. 39. I limit myself here to what appears in the Diario of Campanile, noted by Fuidoro. Masaniello had just spoken with the cardinal and was walking in the cloister when he heard the hiss of a passing bullet. Then, with three “companions,” he ran up the stairs to go into the church and, on meeting Perrone, he confronted him, shouting, “‘You are betraying us on behalf of the duke of Maddaloni.’ Perrone swore again and again that he knew nothing of this.” At that moment, some harquebuses were fired: Campanile, Diario di G. C. circa la sollevazione della Plebe di Napoli, f. 10. 5 What Della Moneca writes here suggests that he was a dottore with well-placed friendships. A document of 30 August 1647 attests to his acquaintance with the Duke of Caivano: Notizie tratte dai giornali copiapolizze degli antichi banchi napolitani intorno al periodo della rivoluzione del 1647–1648, edited by Fausto Nicolini (Naples: L’Arte tipografica, 1959–1960), vol. II, p. 209.

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and Sellaria. And many lords joined in this, and in particular the Signor Duke of Maddaloni, Don Giuseppe Carafa, the Prince of Montesarchio Avalos, the Prince of La Torella, the Prince of Rocca Filamarino, the Marquis of Montesilvano, the Duke of Siano Capecelatro, the Marquis of Sangiuliano Montalvo, the prior of La Roccella Carafa, Fra Titta Caracciolo of Santo Buono, Don Giuseppe di Sanguino and others. By these lords were summoned more bandits, delinquents, and others of evil life, called in the first place by Capitan Miccaro Perrone, Andrea Basciano, Peppe Palumbo, Abbot Nicola Ametrano, the brothers Carlo and Giuseppe Catania, [and] others, to the number of 300, with good promises made them by His Excellency [the viceroy], and many others, that members of the People and nobles should enter incognito into the parade in the market: Berardino Grasso, an influential man with a big, secret following waited inside the church and convent of the Carmine, Peppe Palumbo in the Conceria quarter on the other side [of the market from the Carmine], Andrea Basciano in the Sellaria, Abbot Nicola Ametrano in the Seggio di Porto quarter and others around the market, Andrea Rama, Angelillo Altizzone [Ardizzone], gentlemen, with a following of three hundred men all at the gate [of the city], with the watchword that when they rang the hour of Vespers they were to rush into the market, [and] kill Masaniello with all his followers.6

The knights, many of them shut up in the castle, unwilling to approve the capitoli, had decided, in accord with the viceroy, to kill Masaniello and to punish the people of the low quarters. Della Moneca furnishes here many well-known names: the Carafa, the Prince of Montesarchio, the Prince of Rocca Filomarino, and others. To them he joined Perrone and other heads of the people who had been threatened, like Basciano and Palumbo, and also the Catania brothers and Michelangelo Ardizzone, who would be among those who would eventually kill Masaniello. In no time at all, a mobilization against Masaniello and the Market folk arose among groups and persons who had recently sided with them. We see here the “tendency to betrayal” that had taken root in Naples, according to Tutini and Verde. We shall turn to this matter later. Let us now return to what happened right after the attentat. The Perrone brothers, Miccaro and Gregorio, reached the convent. Miccaro was found there in a cell. After killing him, the people savaged his corpse. No one, says the Casanatense chronicle, failed to strike it, “and he who could not hit him with weapons hit him with a stick, and they cut off 6 Della Moneca, Istoria delle revoluzioni, f. 39r.

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his male organ and carried it around the city on a lance. He could not have had a better end, for the great villainies that he had done when alive, as he was a man full of every sort of vice.”7 In the convent they also caught Bernardino Grasso, another noted bandit, bewigged to escape detection. According to Giraffi and others we cite, to show the breadth of sources on these dramatic moments – Genoese Resident Sauli, Donzelli, plus Tutini and Verde – Grasso was found in the cardinal’s room. He was found and killed at once, in the same room where the Signor Cardinal stayed, that was in the rooms of the general [of the Carmelites]. He was hit by a harquebus shot through the window of that room when, aware that he was being pursued with intent to kill, he was trying to flee into the cloister. His precipitous flight convinced the public that he was a thoroughgoing traitor.8

To dodge the bullet, Grasso shouted that he could reveal secrets. “You should know that there is a plan to blow up into the air a great part of the city. And, as a sign that it is true, you will find in the ditches many barrels of powder, and tonight they are awaiting a great multitude of men to do great harm.” Interrogated – at whose command had such things been done? – he answered that it was at the orders of the Duke of Maddaloni and his brother.” “Many barrels of powder […].” Was it true? It seems so. The cardinal, in a letter to the pope of 12 July, wrote that “all they found was six barrels of powder, in a sewer there.”9 Gabriele Tontoli, always eager to cast the cardinal in a flattering light, a writer who in his chronicle dedicated poems to the prelate, denies that any of this happened. “I find that this is completely vulgar rumour, that has no substance at all.” But Tontoli is in the minority.10 Even Giraffi, though close to the cardinal, writes that 15,000 pounds of powder were carried to the market, and that poison had been put into the water conduits, so that two small children died. According to Giraffi, the plotters’ goal was Masaniello’s death and the extermination of the people of the market and its adjacent quarters. In his account, the French comte Modène argued against taking 7 Casanatense Anonymous, Narrazione della rivolta, f. 43r; Fiordelisi, Gli incendii in Napoli, pp. 38–39. 8 Giraffi, Le rivolutioni di Napoli, p. 89; Sauli, Copia di lettera del M[aest]ro di campo, p. 364, et al. 9 Filomarino, Lettere, p. 384. 10 Tontoli, Il Mas’Aniello, p. 107. See also Donzelli, Partenope liberata, p. 34.

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this information seriously. As one who understood well the art of war, he knew that it was hard to transport so much gunpowder.11 So, perhaps there was less, the passage in Della Moneca’s chronicle leaves no room for doubt that the conspirators, so many and so diverse, had had the folk of the low quarters in their sights. This explains not only their fierce animus against the bandits in the hours that followed, but also the general terror, as all of the elite was willing to do anything possible to stop the process in course, the cardinal among them. Had the cardinal seen? What did he know? Giraffi, as we have said, tells how Grasso was killed in the cardinal’s room. What was he doing there? Did he think he was under protection, or did he enter against the cardinal’s will? There must have been a fierce argument about this matter. Cardinal Filomarino told the pope, “The greatest slaughter was done in the church and in the convent of the Carmine, where I was. In my own room, where rumour had it that the Duke of Maddaloni was hiding, I gave absolution myself to many on the point of death, in particular to a tailor.”12 Tontoli says that there was found “an unfortunate,” who, in the turmoil, was mistaken for a bandit.13 In a source conserved at the Vatican (besides the De Santis chronicle), one reads that the door of the cardinal’s room was broken open violently. “Tomaso Aniello, hearing that the people were shouting that the Signor cardinal had had a hand in the betrayal, at once ran up to save him from their fury, and arrived in time, for they were already breaking down the cell door.”14 According to this source, which did not want to cast suspicion on Filomarino, far from it, they found a man of the people who was trying to flee through the window. Hit by harquebus fire, he fell at the feet of the cardinal, who had scant time to give him a last blessing. According to another author, in the cardinal’s presence was found a “poor innocent” while he tried to flee through the window. He takes pains to note that the door of the room was knocked to the floor because the people suspected that Maddaloni and his accomplices might be there.15 11 Giraffi, Le rivolutioni di Napoli, p. 92; Modène, Mémoires, p. 85. For similar doubts about this gunpowder, see also Capecelatro, Diario, p. 55. 12 Filomarino, Lettere, p. 384, letter of 12 July. 13 Tontoli, Il Mas’Aniello, p. 103. The writer wanted to defend the cardinal from rumours: “God inspired some of those members of the people to go exploring the pockets of Perroni and Grassi and others, where they found some writings which made clear the innocence of the cardinal.” 14 Anonymous, Relatione della sollevatione seguita in Napoli alli 7 Luglio 1647, f. 86r. This is a report in defence of the cardinal: “Meanwhile, when he was told of the betrayal of Maddaloni, His Eminence was very much astonished, and apologized, saying he knew nothing of it, and for that reason the People failed to do due diligence searching all the cells to find the duke, who had already been saved by Perrone.” 15 De Santis, Historia del tumulto, p. 85.

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Other writers present a different version of the facts. For Donzelli, Tutini and Verde, and the Casanatense Anonymous, for instance, the cardinal was actually in the sights of the conspirators.16 This version has a certain credibility. Ascanio Filomarino had long had, and retained, a stance that displeased the knights. But would they have dared kill him? And why kill him, after having received from him a clear signal of his benevolence toward the knights, with his cancellation of a full thirty-six houses from the list of dwellings for burning. In any case, this rumour that the conspirators had targeted the cardinal ran rampant, probably to rebut the counter-rumour that accused him of being their accomplice. Somewhat later, Francesco Capecelatro asked him about the matter and the cardinal answered that “he accounted it a fable.”17 The second rumour may have been floated to defend Filomarino, who for several hours was suspected, along with the viceroy. The likeliest hypothesis, nevertheless, is that he knew of the conspiracy but could do little to thwart it. What supports this well is a passage in the Fuidoro chronicle. A little before the conspiracy, Masaniello went to the cardinal to say that he had been warned by Genoino that there were treasons afoot to harm him, but the cardinal tried to assure him that this was a lie. The chronicler makes it clear: “Masaniello did not tell a lie, on account of the plot that Genoino told him about, who, advising him with feigned charity, was himself in on the plot to assure that Masaniello would be alone at the consulta.”18 If Genoino knew about or joined the plot, it is hard to believe that the cardinal did not know too, given the close collaboration between the two, not to mention the cardinal’s canny mind, which his seventeenth-century biographer depicts.19 Besides all this, we have other information. The Duke of Maddaloni, after the shots were fired, vanished into thin air. Masaniello sent thousands to catch him, all in vain. Nor would they succeed later, as we know.20 Tontoli writes: But a Great Saint was the man [Filomarino] who, this time, amidst great danger, saved the Duke of Maddaloni from the wrath of the people. For, 16 Donzelli, Partenope liberata, p. 34; Tutini-Verde, Racconto della sollevatione, p. 43; Casanatense Anonymous, Narrazione della rivolta, f. 42r. 17 Capecelatro, Diario, p. 55. 18 Fuidoro, Successi historici, p. 41. 19 According to the author of the La giusta statera de’ porporati, the cardinal was “a very intelligent man, but one who tried hard to give the impression that all he was was a simple servant of ‘Good God’.” See Lorizzo, “Il Cappello questo Cardinale…,” p. 410. 20 For good detail on this, see De Santis, Historia del tumulto, p. 96.

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when he was avidly sought, and looked for at the Cesarea and other places, he had the good fortune in the morning, quite early, to escape on a very swift horse, without the people’s sighting him. He left from the Conception of the Capuchin fathers, accompanied by the prayers of those true servants of the Lord.21

This passage may be a hidden homage to the cardinal, who had already saved Maddaloni’s goods; it may be one of those dissimulations in which seventeenth-century history writing – intended for those in the know – abound. But also we can note here that the plebs accused the cardinal of having protected Maddaloni, a thing that, read closely, the sources prove. Above all, Cardinal Filomarino himself talks of it. Let us return to the cardinal’s letter (already quoted) of 12 July: “The greatest slaughter was done in the church and in the convent of the Carmine, where I was. In my own room, where rumour had it that the Duke of Maddaloni was hiding, I gave absolution myself to many on the point of death, in particular to a tailor.”22 Undoubtedly, Filomarino wanted to give the pontiff, who would learn of this episode by other channels too, his own version. La Vita di Masaniello takes it as certain that Maddaloni had fled to his room: “There was finally found the Duke of Maddaloni, who was in the room of the cardinal and he was at once asked what he was doing there. He was surrendered on the spot and locked inside a room of the same palace, which was put under the guard of members of the people.”23 Unfortunately, while we are not sure of this, it pays to heed this story, to explain the reactions towards His Eminence by Masaniello and the plebs. The author of a chronicle states, “There were some from the crowd who ran at the cardinal, all stirred up, telling him that he had been the author of this conspiracy, and they all wanted to cut him to pieces, and they abused him with evil words.”24 For that reason, the cardinal wanted to retreat “into his archepiscopal palace, to leave room for the angers of such impious men, indeed barbarians, and he left that people all infuriated, and Masaniello too, and he [the cardinal] was not sure that he could reach his house.”25 Masaniello, too, had moments of unease: “He came out of the church very indignant and out of sorts, and he apologized to the people saying that he no 21 Tontoli, Il Mas’Aniello, pp. 107–108. 22 Filomarino, Lettere, p. 384. 23 Anonymous, Vita di Masaniello, f. 149v. 24 Mayorica, I tumulti e revolutioni, f. 72v. 25 Fuidoro, Successi historici, p. 44.

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longer wanted to govern because he had just escaped that danger, and he was firm in that opinion. But he was then persuaded by everyone and talked out of it with fervent prayers, and he mounted on horseback, and continued in command.”26 He did not want to govern further, but could not pull back. At that point, for everyone, his life was protected by God. The chroniclers recount the workings of the attack from which he had emerged unscathed with the eye for detail typical of petitions for making a new saint: “in one single moment inside the church, in the middle of ten thousand persons, [they fired] seven harquebus shots at Masaniello, without, however, his being hit by any of them. Rather, some bullets, hitting his shirt, in his chest fell to the ground, a thing that was interpreted as a miracle of the Most Holy Madonna of the Carmine, whose little costume he was wearing, hanging from that same chest.”27 “Their bullets – part fell to the ground and part in the shirt, he not being wounded in any part.”28 “Oh clear miracle of the Carmelitan protection! Of so many bullets, that they vomited in pairs, in great number, those thunders of Mars, none of them wounded in the least bit Masaniello” – even Tontoli exclaimed, he who later did not hesitate to legitimate his murder.29 So, Masaniello remained in command, giving orders, above all to kill all the bandits and to bring him, dead or alive, Maddaloni and his brother. This order was decreed orally and in writing.30 Thousands of men went looking for the Carafa duke; a good 10,000 says one reliable source.31 Rage urged them on, and the wish to please that leader whom they so unexpectedly feared losing.

2.

“And I am Aniello the Butcher”

The Carafa had fled in different directions. We lose track of Maddaloni, but Peppe Carafa took refuge with the Prior of Rocella, Gregorio Carafa, at Santa Maria la Nova. Certain that sooner or later Masaniello’s followers would arrive, he wrote the viceroy a note, asking him to fire the cannon towards the church where he was, and entrusted it to a friar who soon was arrested and beaten.32 So, seeing that nothing was happening, and certain 26 Anonymous, Storia di Masaniello, f. 22v. 27 Giraffi, Le rivolutioni di Napoli, p. 88. 28 Montanario, In questo libro vi sono notate tutte le cose, f. 6r. 29 Tontoli, Il Mas’Aniello, p. 101. 30 Tutini-Verde, Racconto della sollevatione, p. 50. 31 Fuidoro, Successi historici, p. 44. 32 Giraffi, Le rivolutioni di Napoli, p. 96.

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that they would soon be caught, Peppe and the convent’s prior left the church, fleeing in opposite directions. One, in the narrow streets “below the Cerriglio” [in the centre of Naples] found his death, while the other, who had headed towards the church of San Cristoforo, escaped with his life. After vain attempts to dodge his looming destiny, Peppe was captured. To save his life, he offered thousands of ducats to the men who caught him, but to no avail. His exchange of words with his nemesis, a butcher, when his existence ended miserably, was repeated endlessly: “What do you want! I am Don Gioseppe Carafa.” “And I am Aniello the butcher.” “And he slit his throat.”33 Similar piquant remarks appear in Fuidoro’s chronicle: “Look, I am Don Peppo Carafa.” “We know you well and we have been looking for you,” and in others too.34 The worker who took Peppe’s life was happy to have done so. Giuseppe Carafa was, we read, bolder than his brother. Here is a capsule portrait: By nature [he was] given to sumptuous display and from a tender age he showed great haughtiness; he began to lead a licentious life, a scorner of every danger, more feared than loved, and, stirred by the nobility of his blood, and by his natural daring, he wanted to be obeyed by all, on the assumption that no man dared to displease him: rather, even the duke himself, his brother, fled from crossing him, and quarreling with him.35

One is struck by the harsh judgment of Capecelatro, himself a noble: of a too-furious spirit, and inclined to cruelty and homicides, and to being friendlier than was proper in a man of such high birth to bandits and other evil-doers, who under his protection committed grave and very harsh crimes against those who could not resist, and the ministers of the king did nothing to punish them, and [to give] the proper demonstration [of justice], for the respect they bore Don Giuseppe, and this thing, along with others, earned him the hatred of the common folk, and brought on his so untimely end.36

After cutting off his head, the plebeians began to drag the corpse, “with unutterable noise” in a city where the shouts of thousands flailed the air 33 Sauli, Copia di lettera del M[aest]ro di campo, p. 363. 34 Fuidoro, Successi historici, p. 46; Tutini-Verde, Racconto della sollevatione, p. 52. 35 De Fiore, Racconto de Tumulti popolari, p. 29. 36 Capecelatro, Diario, p. 58.

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in ways hardly conceivable today. The lazzari and the butcher, who was taken for a hero, passed through the street of the trunk-makers, and the Rua Catalana, down to the Piazza di Porto.37 The news that “Don Peppe Carafa” had been killed spread fast, and thousands of armed men lined up “for the passing of the head of this knight, to give him the final honour of a defaming funeral.”38 The event stirred “terror,” as the papal nuncio wrote. “But the thing that caused the terror to grow beyond measure was to see upon a pike the head of Signor Don Peppe Carafa, having shortly before seen his bloody shirt, and a piece of his clothing stuck onto a sword as bloodied.”39 The head was born as if in triumph to the Capitan Generale. The well-known painting by Micco Spadaro, who had been in Carafa’s employ, L’uccisione di Don Giuseppe Carafa (Naples, Museo di San Martino), finished not long after the event, shows the moments before the head was delivered. One sees the head of a man with a moustache and hair that reaches the neck, held aloft on a pike by a barefoot man.40 One can imagine Masaniello’s satisfaction on seeing one of the two Carafa brothers beheaded. When it came before him, he probably exclaimed something about divine justice, as Giraffi writes, “Divine justice arrives late, but it arrives.”41 Many must have thought that God had desired that “justice,” even if they were stunned by death’s spectacle – heads on pikes and cadavers dragged across the city – a business that sprawled ever outward, invading not only the market, but also the Sellaria and Conceria. 42 37 On this street and the foreign communities in Naples, see Stephen Cummins, Encountering Spain in Early Modern Naples: Language, Customs and Sociability in Piers Baker-Bates and Miles Pattenden (eds), The Spanish Presence in Sixteenth-Century Italy: Images of Iberia (London: Ashgate, 2015), pp. 43-62. 38 Fuidoro, Successi historici, p. 46. 39 Letter of 13 July to the pope, beginning “Continua qui tuttavia la sollevatione,” Vatican City, ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Napoli, vol. 42, f. 344r. 40 On this painting, and its attempt to offer a serious portait of the plebs in these moments, see Christopher R. Marshall, “‘Causa di stravaganze’: Order and Anarchy in Domenico Gargiulo’s Revolt of Masaniello,” Art Bulletin, vol. 80, n. 3 (1998): 478–496; about the painting The Revolt of Masaniello in 1647, by Gargiulo and the painting The Revolt of Masaniello in 1647, by Michelangelo Cerquozzi for the Francophile cardinal Spada, see Wendy Wassyng Roworth, “The Evolution of History Painting. Masaniello’s Revolt and Other Disasters in Seventeenth Century Naples,” The Art Bulletin, vol. 75, n. 2 (June 1993): 219–234; see also Hugon, Naples insurgée, pp. 323 ff. 41 Giraffi, Le rivolutioni di Napoli, p. 99. 42 According to Tutini and Verde, Racconto della sollevatione, p. 47, at the market many heads were put on the base of the Epitaffio, on which the capitoli were to be incised. The monument is visible in Spadaro’s painting, La rivolta di Masaniello, in the Certosa di San Martino in Naples. The work, entrusted to Cosimo Fanzago, began on Saturday. The monument, in white marble, was to have been embellished with a statue of the king, and one of the cardinal, and one either of Masaniello or of the Duke of Arcos, according to the sources: Anon., Storia di Masaniello, f. 35v; De Fiore, Racconto de Tumulti popolari, p. 26; Diario di G.C. circa la sollevazione della Plebe di Napoli,

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After that comment, Masaniello rewarded the butcher and, in the rare euphoria of the hours after an attack that aimed to kill him, amused himself by entertaining his barefoot followers, cajoling the noble as if he were still alive, pulling the moustache that aged him beyond his years – Peppe was only thirty – and that made him seem the prouder. “Eh Messer, did you want to tussle with me?”43 Befitting that air of superiority that Masaniello had put on, the barefoot folk put Carafa in the stocks, set a crown of false gold on his head, and tied to his lacerated neck the label, “D. Peppo rebel of the Fatherland, and traitor of the most faithful people.”44 They then affixed to the pike his right foot, newly severed. This act was much discussed; various sources gloss it. The Casanatense Anonymous explains that it was Michele de Santis who cut off the right foot, and presented it to Masaniello saying that he had cut it off because with that foot he had given many kicks to a Capuchin Father because the man had reproached him for a very grave sin. Masaniello had it bound to the very same pike where the head was, and he gave another five zecchini [gold coins] to the said Michele. 45

According to other versions, the foot was severed to content a man who, in his rage, bit one of Carafa’s legs, biting off a “big mouthful” – this act of cannibalism was well known.46 So many were the crimes Peppe Carafa was alleged to have committed with that foot that the etiology of its amputation is, perforce, broad and varied. Some glosses harkened back to distant deeds. One anonymous author alludes, if not precisely, to the killing of Camillo Soprano, the popular governor of the house of the Annunziata, in August 1633, at the hand of Fabrizio Carafa (the deed was, in fact, Fabrizio’s but the author avers that it was Peppe’s). 47 Others bring up the death on the scaffold of the prince of Sanz, in January 1640, an event that left a deep mark on city life. That prince, hostile to the Spaniards, was put to death at f. 15v and elsewhere; Francesco Lofano, “Comportamenti di artisti durante la rivolta napoletana del 1647–1648. Problemi e riflessioni,” in I pittori del dissenso. Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, Andrea de Leone, Pier Francesco Mola, Pietro Testa, Salvator Rosa, edited by Stefan Abl, Anita Viola Sganzerla and Giulia Martina Weston (Rome: Artemide, 2014), pp. 161–184; on Fanzago and his works in Naples see Paola D’Agostino, Cosimo Fanzago scultore (Naples: Paparo edizioni, 2011). 43 Ibid., p. 52. 44 Guido Panico disscussed this episode: Il carnefice e la piazza. Crudeltà di stato e violenza popolare a Napoli in età moderna (Naples: ESI, 1985), p. 131. 45 Casanatense Anonymous, Narrazione della rivolta, f. 44v. 46 Donzelli, Partenope liberata, p. 37. On this cannibal moment, see Rosario Villari, “Piazza Mercato. 10 luglio 1647,” in Napoli. Una storia per immagini, edited by Gaetano Macchiaroli (Naples: Macchiaroli, 1985), pp. 318–321. 47 Anonymous, Succinta Relatione della sollevatione di Napoli, f. 88r.

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Viceroy Medina’s behest, in Piazza Mercato, the place allotted to punishing non-nobles48 and, it seems, when the head toppled, Peppe Carafa had sent it spinning, with his foot. 49 Certainly, at this juncture, the sad end of the Prince of Sanz, in concert or not with that symbolic foot, was often evoked. Indeed, according to Giraffi and others, Peppe Carafa’s head was exposed “in that same place where there was beheaded the unhappy Prince of Sanz, of whose mournful death, already ordained for him by the Duke of Medina las Torres, the two Carafas were widely known – and held – to be the only cause.”50 Meanwhile, as the news spread wider, thousands came to Naples to join the spectacle. For this reason, the chronicler Fuidoro accompanied his family to the Marina del Vino and shipped them towards Procida, without having to ask Masaniello’s followers for permission and risk trouble, as Fuidoro’s family was friendly with that of Naclerio, the hated Eletto del popolo.51 According to “the politicals,” Carafa’s punishment, of which some chroniclers like Tontoli disapproved, gave Masaniello’s power a goodly lift. The Count of Modène remarked [in French], “the blood of Don Peppe Carafa had so strongly cemented Masaniello’s authority that commanding and being obeyed was to him but one and the same thing.”52 Modène’s words would so please Francis Midon that he took them as his own in his story of the revolt, merely translating them word for word.53

3.

Absolute Power

Masaniello’s new power utterly refashioned the city’s life, via orders that met swift, full execution. Among the first was to dig trenches in the market, to 48 “Giovanni Oref ice principe di Sanz decapitato in Napoli nel 1640,” edited by Scipione Volpicella, Archivio storico per le province napoletane, III (1879), 4: 713–742. 49 Montanario, In questo libro vi sono notate tutte le cose, f. 6r. 50 Giraffi, Le rivolutioni di Napoli, p. 100; Tontoli, Il Mas’Aniello, p. 105; Casanatense Anonymous, Narrazione della rivolta, f. 44v. For other explanations of the severed foot, see Pollio, Historia del Regno di Napoli, f. 27r; Anonymous, Storia di Masaniello, f. 24r. 51 Cfr. Fuidoro, “Nota” a Campanile, Diario di G.C. circa la sollevazione della Plebe di Napoli, f. 12r, and Anna Maria Giraldi, “Fuidoro tra cronaca, politica e storia,” in Fuidoro, Successi historici, p. xxii. 52 Modène, Mémoires, p. 94. 53 “The Blood of Caraffa had so strongly cemented the Fisherman’s Authority, that commanding, and being obeyed, was to him but one and the same Thing.”: Francis Midon, The History of the Rise and Fall of Masaniello, the Fisherman of Naples containing an Exact and Impartial Relation of the Tumults and Popular Insurrections, that Happened in that Kingdom (in the Year 1647) on Account of the Tax upon Fruits (London: C. Davis and T. Green, 1729), p. 142.

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make it harder to cross. He also ordered the casali folk summoned to help the people of Naples. The city soon saw companies of men and women, armed as best as they could be, converging on the market from Posillipo, Arenella, Treporte, Vomero, Antignano, Marano, Mugnano, Piscinola, Mariglianella, and other places.54 Masaniello soon began to decide on the life or death of those brought before him as the plotters’ likely accomplices. He came to one of the two windows of his house, where he had retreated for safety. Watching him, many saw in his behaviour signs that he was a divine messenger. It was said that, before sentencing, he consulted the Holy Spirit. This talk looked to what he did when passing judgement. Having gone hoarse, rather than speak, he looked the accused over carefully, then moved his right hand, to which he had tied a turquoise ribbon from which hung a silver object, a “secure sign,” from which, people said, the Spirit spoke to him. This was all ignorant, lower-class chatter, remarked Tutini and Verde.55 The chroniclers stressed how he condemned to death only men who subverted the life of Naples. Among those put to death was Maddaloni’s master musician, Spiritillo. Tutini and Verde write that he was “the greatest assassin there was in the city, who had assassinated and killed a great quantity of persons, and, with him, one never saw justice from the Spaniards.” Another was a fellow who lived at the Pendino (near the cathedral), who dressed as a priest, the more easily to steal and kill. He dominated “that zone, extorting and ransoming those poor artisans who could not breathe.” When Masaniello learned of his conduct, he sent a squad to catch him and, in the end, had him put to death. Another, Ciccio Teano, from Cava (towards Salerno), was in the service of the Prince of Avellino. Like many men from that town, “he intervened to impose marriages by force, and peace-pacts by violence and threats. There was not an alley between San Lorenzo and the Vicaria that in the evenings they were not there, robbing, and shaking down the shopkeepers and artisans. They committed infinite homicides and murders, and one could not speak out.”56 For many, these “justices” were long overdue. Many folk, well informed of the wickedness of these people, admired, in the turnings of this world, the effects of Divine justice, seeing these folk treated by the plebs in the same way that they had treated many others. This shedding of blood was one of the benefits that the present tumult 54 Fuidoro, Successi historici, pp. 52–53. 55 Tutini-Verde, Racconto della sollevatione, pp. 48–49. 56 Ibid., pp. 49–50.

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has brought: because it cleansed the city from an illness so great that, with time, it would have been able to infect everything.57

The author of the Storia di Masaniello writes something similar: there died many false “abbots,” those who, dressed as priests with cloaks, “with their acts of daring, had till then dominated the city.”58

4. Off with the Cloaks and Other Orders Other orders that evening touched the entire population of the city, setting off a veritable revolution. Masaniello ordered both the people and the nobles to post within two days a placard with the letter “P,” for “Popolo,” on the doorways or doors of their houses, as a sign of loyalty. Soon, endless lines appeared at the shops of the painters. Seeing this, Donzelli gushed, “The prettiest of the actions,” he wrote, “was to see the cultivation of the painters, to acquire those signs before the required two days were up, a peremptory due-date, for it was known to all that with Tomas Anello it was important not risk being tardy.”59 Other orders also affected city life, such as forbidding the ferraiolo, the long cloak that might hide harquebuses or other arms.60 No exceptions were allowed. So, one saw friars, and even high prelates, going about as if out in the country. At the Vatican Library one finds letters from men of religion where the question comes up. Some were satisfied with the decision: “he has given us life in this hot weather, having commanded that one should go without a cape, and with habits worn high, so that we go with the hat only [the last element of clerical garb] as if we were in the country. They follow his orders more than they do the pope’s, as he has authority over the men of religion.”61 Some instead complained that: “He has given the order that no one wear a cloak, and that every secular should carry some sort of arms; and I have to go with a weapon on my shoulder. He is obeyed, but in a different way from how one obeyed the Duke of Osuna.”62 Dottore Simonetta records that men of religion who met in the street in Naples burst out laughing at the unaccustomed sight of legs visible out in 57 De Santis, Historia del tumulto, pp. 92–93. 58 Anonymous, Storia di Masaniello, f. 24v. 59 Donzelli, Partenope liberata, p. 39, and Fuidoro, Successi historici, p. 49. For a recent comment on the rush to paint the letter on every door, see Galasso, Il Regno di Napoli, p. 309. 60 For the use of the ferraiolo, a long cloak, see Leone, La vita quotidiana a Napoli, pp. 55 ff. 61 Anonymous, Doppo lo scritto a V[ostra] P[ie]tà gli do nuova, BAV, Chigi G VII 210, f. 141v. 62 Anonymous, Signor mio / In questa, BAV, Barb. Lat. 7608, f. 18r (letter of 13 July).

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the world, for the first time; “the Reverend Jesuits, and Paolini fathers and all the other religious orders went without cloaks, with sticks, and when they looked one another in the face they laughed.”63

5.

The Angel and the Devil

If, after the attack, Masaniello was widely considered “an angel” (as we read in one account of the time): an “angel sent by God” not “subject to human ills,” then the viceroy was the devil, and one could not, “on the contrary heed the promises of the Signor viceroy, as one views him to be a participant in this plot.”64 Masaniello was certain that the viceroy had played a central role in the conspiracy. Accordingly, he ordered that he receive neither further provisions nor water.65 Had this policy been followed, for the viceroy it would have spelled the end. For this reason, the cardinal begged, despite the threats that he had suffered, to be allowed to show the innocence of them both. He sent Masaniello a letter, ostensibly addressed to him, but written for public reading. There, he accused Maddaloni of the whole thing and said that, had he had a bandit in his power, absolutely, he would have surrendered him to the people.66 So, the cardinal headed toward the market, where he exaggerated, saying an adjustment was convenient, both so as not to refuse obedience to the padrone [the master, the viceroy], which would be rebellion, and for the good of the public, for with the peace there would be an agreement as to exemption from the gabelle, bringing to a very abundant food supply not only the city, but the whole Kingdom, and assuring him that His Excellency saw them all as his children, and not his vassals, and not neglecting to exaggerate the damage that otherwise would happen. 63 Simonetta, Historia delle rivoluzioni di Napoli, f. 73v. 64 Anonymous, Storia di Masaniello, f. 23v. 65 Giraffi, Le rivolutioni di Napoli, p. 100. 66 “My Most Eminent and most Reverent Lord, the new mistrust of the people, due to the accident of the Duke of Maddaloni, distresses me greatly, as I desire no thing more than the satisfaction of the people and the settlement of the city’s affairs; I believe I have told Your Eminence that if I had in my power any of the bandits, I would consign them gladly to the authority of the Most Faithful City, and anyone who might perturb the peace.” This letter, dated 10 July, appears, among various printed chronicles, in Piacente, Le rivoluzioni del Regno, p. 38.

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According to this author, the cardinal’s words, so well-crafted, convinced the people there, who, “although they were very afraid to give their opinion in the presence of their fearsome Capitan Generale, nevertheless, from the murmurings and piteous sighs one understood that their desire was to agree to what was proposed by him.”67 The cardinal played his role, “serving, flattering, almost worshiping Captain Tomas’Aniello.”68 But it was hardly easy: suspicions still ran strong and fears were deep. To reassure the plebs of the market about the danger of poisoned water, the cardinal had himself brought a jar of water from the Carmine and drank it publicly. In the end his efforts and theatrical actions induced Masaniello to yield and so he returned to treating him with respect, in his presence, as before. The cardinal remained very tactful with Masaniello, as he must, as he aimed to fetch him to the palace, while he did not want to go. As we know, Masaniello responded to the viceroy’s invitations with: “Let him come to me if there is something he wants.”69 To soften him up, the Duke of Arcos offered a pension, but Masaniello replied, “He was able to provide great heaps of money for service to his Excellency, and adding that he should contrive to give the privileges of Charles V, because there was no other way for His Excellency to get out of the castle alive.”70 In the end, Masaniello agreed to go to the palace. But only because he was urged by many, convinced that they should not break off a negotiation that could bring in the new rules the people were hoping for. Besides, it seems that the viceroy sent his own children to the market as hostages, as Masaniello had requested.71 The evening finally ended in a fashion worth recording. “Young boys with little bells”72 made the rounds in Naples, giving the order to put lights at the windows and to keep them burning all night long, to hamper any movements by the bandits. Everyone obeyed; from windows and balconies, candles and oil lamps glowed. 67 Anonymous, Storia di Masaniello, f. 30v. 68 Anonymous, Relatione della sollevatione della città di Napoli dell’anno 1647, f. 49v. 69 Mayorica, I tumulti e revolutioni, f. 74v. 70 Anonymous, anonymous letter that begins, “Popolo mio, eccoti osservati li toi privilegi,” ASN, Doria d’Angri, parte I, 30/19, p. II. 71 According to some, the viceroy sent one of his two sons (Anonymous, Doppo lo scritto a V[ostra]. P[ie]tà gli do nuova, f. 146r). Others say he sent both of them: Anonymous, Relatione. Dell’origine, f. 45r. Other versions appear in other places. Della Moneca asserts that the knights urged the viceroy to let them attack, but he decided to win the people over by showing himself to be benevolent (f. 41v). 72 Mayorica, I tumulti e revolutioni, f. 74v.

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In a city devoid of artificial light, it was a spectacle never before seen. Determined not to be taken off guard again, wounded but more indomitable than ever, Naples seemed “a starry sky.”73

73 Anonymous, Relatione della Sollevatione della città di Napoli dell’anno 1647, f. 49r; the spectacle of the illuminated city was told in diverse ways: it was a challenge worthy of baroque high writing: Diego Amatore, Napoli sollevata (Bologna: per gli eredi del Dozza, 1650), p. 29, did his level best: “On this confused and perilous night, the artificial torches snatched from the glowing stars the jurisdiction over light. The placement of the lights at the windows rivaled the light of day.” On this intense striving to express a sensational event, see Giorgio Fulco, La fortuna letteraria, in Masaniello, by Musi, pp. 42–47, and, more generally, Fulco, La «meravigliosa» passione. Studi sul Barocco tra letteratura ed arte (Rome: Salerno Editrice, 2001).

VII. The Visit to the Palace Thursday (Day 11) Abstract Thanks to the Cardinal Filomarino, negotiations for drafting an agreement with the viceroy continue. The people desire, among other things, the abolition of the gabelle, imposed after Charles V, and the direct election of their eletto, hitherto chosen by the viceroy. Masaniello goes to the palace, escorted by thousands of men and women. The most detailed reports help us reconstruct the viceroy’s nimble ruses, the capopopolo’s strong emotions, his pride in his success and his guilty feelings towards the king, which bring him to promise to dispatch him five million ducats, in recompense for the privileges granted. But this move could not have pleased the Cardinal. Keywords: Viceregal Palace, duke of Arcos, Masaniello’s speeches, Plebs and Popolo’s feelings

1.

The Food Supply

Early the next day, Masaniello’s followers began to ensure that all the people were following orders. Fra Sebastiano di Bologna recounts how he was at a bakery when some lazzari approached him, shouting, “Off with the capes!” The friar still had his on, and without hesitation the lazzari took it off him.1 Others kept hunting for Maddaloni, but never caught him. They did capture a slave of his, one Mustafà, who, in exchange for his life, swiftly told them where Maddaloni had stashed his goods. They were found in the monastery of the Barefoot Fathers of Sant’Agostino and the church of Santa Maria della Stella – a treasure precious beyond counting. The lazzari heaped it all in big carts and went to the market, where it kindled amazement; here were 1 Molini, Racconto, p. 61.

D’Alessio, S. Masaniello. The Life and Afterlife of a Neapolitan Revolutionary Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2022 doi: 10.5117/9789463721455_ch07

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the furniture and personal effects of the most potent knight in Naples.2 Tutini and Verde report that there was also a fine carriage hitched to oxen, as a form of insult: “And so were brought all the silverware and goldware, drapes, decorations, and other household furnishing to the market, and a famous carriage made a few years earlier when he took a wife, worth some fifteen thousand scudi; for ignominy they had it driven to the market pulled by oxen.”3 From the monastery of Sant’Agostino they extracted cloths of gold, and silk, “very rich tapestries, coins, pictures very nobly painted, vessels of silver, gold, and gems, coaches decorated with gold, fine horses, and other furnishings of very great value.”4 As we read in the Casanatense chronicle, as ever a surprisingly rich record, from Santa Maria della Stella issued the following: Nine carts of decorated cloth for the house, the most beautiful in the world, and very rich. A cart on which there were two very big “splendours” of silver, weighing five cantara and seventy rotoli [ca. 500 kilos in all, at about 90 kilos per cantara]. A cart with two braziers, one small and the other very big in weight, and the big one had 3000 scudi of work in it. A cart full of small and mid-sized plates, 490 in number. A cart full of loose silver, that is cups, bowls, and other small silver goods… A cart full of gilded silver, with his garments. Five other carts full of house furnishings of every sort. In all, four trunks of diverse goods, four other carts full of the most beautiful pictures. In all there were twenty-three carts, all of them full, and all these goods were carried to the market, and scorned by Masaniello.

The anonymous author of this chronicle stresses how Masaniello made a show of his scorn for this “stuff.” But note what he adds next: he also brought to the market the duke’s horses, and then had them ridden “by his friends, fishmongers, his equals, and barefoot men of the Market – Lavinaio and 2 These confiscated goods came from Maddaloni’s house at the “Stella,” where he had lived since he was a boy. See Ludovico de la Ville Sur-Yllon, “Il palazzo di Maddaloni alla Stella,” Napoli nobilissima, vol. XIII (1904), pp. 145–147: more can be learned about the interior; an excellent commentary appears in Giuseppe Galasso, “Cultura materiale e vita nobiliare in un inventario calabrese del ’500,” in Galasso, L’altra Europa, pp. 284–311. 3 Tutini-Verde, Racconto della sollevatione, p. 52. 4 Capecelatro, Diario, p. 60.

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Pietra del Pesce, and he gave one of them [the horses] to Giovanni Bianco, the fishmonger.”5 For many onlookers, seeing with their own eyes fishmongers astride those horses distilled their world’s inversion. Ecclesiastes, chapter 10, 7, has an image of the world turned upside down: “I have seen servants upon horses, and princes walking as servants upon the earth.”6 Maddaloni’s goods were not the only ones brought to the market. The possessions of Cesare Lubrano, hidden in the monastery of the Croce di Lucca and in the Ospedaletto convent, came in, and those of the Duke of Caivano, from the San Sebastiano convent, and those of many others, thanks to betrayals by friends and even kinfolk. Masaniello and the people were very hostile to the knights. Sure of general approbation, Masaniello was quick to stress that hatred. Under the window, out of curiosity, besides the usual people, some knights had gathered, and they were amazed to see that metamorphosis, considering that, with such obedience, a simple seller of fish was ruling […] A little after, Tomas Anello, giving a glance at the piazza, towards the knights, said, “Knights, go away from here. If you don’t, I will have your heads cut off, because we want no other company than simple barefoot folk like me.”7

He then commanded that they must not be allowed to leave Naples, and that the harbours be kept under watch. Thereupon, in collaboration with some legal dottori, he turned to the food supply, to prevent harm to the arrangements that let the people remain in arms. We have from that day, the first after the plot, an actual list of maximum prices, set out in grana [a small coin], written by Giuseppe Thoma, a notary: Lard and suet 13 grana Cuts of meat 11 Ham 12 Soft cheese 12 Hard cheese 15 Cheese proven old 13 Provole cheeses 12 Tondina cheese 12 5 Casanatense Anonymous, Narrazione della rivolta, f. 46v, and also Pollio, Historia del Regno di Napoli, f. 36v. 6 The terms here, from Ecclesiastes, 10. 7, are used in Tontoli, Il Mas’Aniello, p. 171. 7 Donzelli, Partenope liberata, p. 44.

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Salted tuna [Tarantiello] 5 6 A quart of oil By order of Masaniello, but do nothing without his orders, and make a copy of it. The Capitan Generale of the Army of the Kingdom of Naples, Because he could not write Written by the hand of me, notary, Giuseppe Thoma del Terzo di Napoli, today, 11 July 1647.8

The document helps us to imagine, more broadly, the moments of those days when, in extraordinary fashion, dottori surrounded the illiterate man who had become Capitan Generale, to help him in his many functions. Given the political climate these documents reflect, we understand why people came to speak of Masaniello as a king. The cardinal, on 12 July, wrote to the pope: This Masaniello has come to a show of such authority, command, respect, and obedience in these few days that he has made the whole city tremble, a man the most glorious and triumphant that the world has seen. He who has not seen it cannot imagine it in his mind; he who has seen it has not the ability to portray it perfectly to others.9

Giraffi, too, speaks of absolute power. On the first day, Masaniello had become, from “almost a child,” the head of “innumerable plebs.” On the second, with the plebs, he had also rallied the civic people. On the third, he had received from both the job of “Generalissimo.” On the fourth, he had laid on an even firmer hand, through his “eagerness, efficacity, and capacity to handle business of such great importance,” thanks to which, adds Giraffi, he had won “the greatest admiration” from the cardinal.10 Giraffi goes on to describe the “Masaniello phenomenon,” so as to slip into readers’ minds the idea that his absolute dominion was both surprising and intolerable: He laid out trenches, set out sentinels, placed ambushes, gave passwords, caught sight of bandits, arrested delinquents, snared delinquents, condemned the wicked, reviewed squadrons, mustered troops of men, 8 Bandi, in Napoli, BOGN, 28. 3. 13. This decree is not printed but handwritten. 9 Filomarino, Lettere, p. 383. 10 Giraffi, Le rivolutioni di Napoli, p. 106.

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comforted the timid, confirmed the stalwart, noted the boasts of the bold, promised stipends to the lazy, threatened the vile with punishment, tongue-lashed cowards, applauded the strong, setting before the eyes of all the fatherland beset, women afflicted, the old parents, the hungry children, the suffering families, the audacity of the great, and the highhandedness of the powerful.

The city and the casali, and the outlying villages, a population of more than 600,000 souls, hung on his every nod.

2.

With the Dottori

Meanwhile, thanks to the cardinal, negotiations for drafting an agreement with the viceroy continued. The Duke of Arcos was now keen to repair his relations with the people. When galleys were seen off the coast of Pozzuoli, he sent a number of men, even swimmers, to warn them not to approach the port of Naples, for he feared the people’s reaction. But alerting the galleys proved impossible, so all he could do, from Castel Nuovo, was to hold his fire, not answering their saluting gunshots, and to show the people that he had no wish to make use of them. In this he followed the cardinal’s counsel, via his theologian, Giuseppe de Rubeis.11 The galleys, commanded by Giannettino Doria, were then allowed into the port, but only to discharge a Genoese noblewoman coming down to wed a Neapolitan. Then, they were forced to leave and stay a mile offshore. Naturally, it was Masaniello who decided what these ships should do. When Doria asked the new Capitan Generale for supplies to feed his crews, Masaniello was quick to let him have them, showing generosity, as he had with the Germans and other soldiers. He then did the same with the Duke of Arcos: “The viceroy sent him a message saying that in the castle they were dying of hunger, as no one, out of fear, was bringing food. At once Masaniello took one hundred gold zecchini and had people buy chickens, veal, beef, fruit, cheese, and what they needed to refresh themselves and sent them to give to the viceroy.”12 Then the cardinal brought the viceroy the agreement papers [capitolazioni] and he sent them off again to the market

11 Tutini-Verde, Racconto della sollevatione, p. 58. 12 Ibid.; Sauli, Copia di lettera, pp. 365–366; De Santis, Historia del tumulto, p. 104, who reports that an ambassador marvelled that Masaniello was the capopopolo.

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in forma cancellariae – drawn up as an official chancery document, with the consensus of the Collateral Council and the Council of State. Meanwhile, Masaniello continued to intervene in many other matters, at the behest of dozens and dozens of men and women. Some drew up their requests in the form of “memorials” held up to him on spear-points. Helped by the dottori, Masaniello listened to the questions and then decided, signing with a mark: seven horizontal lines crossed by seven vertical strokes.13 A little later, he was seen wearing around his neck, tied by a little cloth band, a little stamp made for him so that he could sign things all the faster, as it took too long to make those lines. As one ironic author observed, the pen was heavier than the oar. Meanwhile, the viceroy and cardinal continued to strive to bring Masaniello to the palace for a first meeting with the viceroy. The Duke of Arcos sent gifts, among them a mule, and the cardinal invited him to dinner, finding food and drink certified by his physician, Antonio Stella, as he knew well that Masaniello seldom ate and drank, for fear of poison.14 That time, Masaniello relaxed his guard and ate. We have a variety of evidence that Masaniello began to fear poison. The anonymous author of the Vita wrote, “when he was at table, he gave half of what was shown to him to his companions, and he made them eat first, and then followed them.”15 In a letter from Naples we read that multitudes furnished him with safe food: “there are always around him thousands of persons, who offer him sweets, and fresh eggs.”16

3.

The Ceremony in the Church and the Cavalcade

There was great euphoria in the market, before the reading of the capitoli. The people saw Masaniello as their own “king” and the more he seemed to neglect his own person, the more they doted on him. Certainly, one among the actions that persuaded many that he cared for the public good alone was his not changing his form of dress. From the first day on, he wore his usual rags. The choice was startling, in this society where clothing represented very precisely the person – work, status in the social hierarchy, and habits. 13 Anonymous, Storia di Masaniello, c. 38r. That Masaniello could not write his name was, of course, not uncommon among the plebs of Naples in the seventeenth century. See Maria Rosaria Pelizzari, La penna e la zappa. Alfabetizzazione, culture e generi di vita nel Mezzogiorno moderno (Salerno: Laveglia, 2000), ch. III. “Alfabeto e fisco. L’alfabetizzazione nel Settecento.” 14 Capecelatro, Diario, p. 66; Donzelli, Partenope liberata, p. 50. 15 Anonymous, Vita di Masaniello, f. 72r–v. 16 Anonymous, Relazione da Napoli del 12 luglio, BAV, Barb. Lat. 7608, f. 14r.

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Before the capitoli were read out, the cardinal tried to convince Masaniello to give up his sailor’s dress and don something more elegant and befitting, but he baulked fiercely, saying that “he had been known since his birth as a fishmonger, and he could not have forgotten it in four days, when on last Saturday he was selling sardines in the market, and he did not wish and did not know how to abandon his work, to the which he promised to return, once he had freed the kingdom from the fiscal burdens.”17 Nevertheless, at the cardinal’s urging, he relented and, in public, put on a white and silver suit, perhaps sewn especially for him by the teachers at the orphanage at the church of the Annunziata.18 A witness records the moment: And he chose to dress himself in public, and even though there were many around him who, doffing their caps, and with extraordinary reverence, tried to serve him [in dressing], he wanted to do it without any help at all, and, wouldn’t you know it, putting the doublet on backwards, he wore the back in front and got so tangled up, and snarled in it, that more than once he tried to throw down that clothing, saying that they were stumbling blocks and they were keeping him tied down, and it is even more to marvel at, that he had no affection at all for this grandeur; he did everything like a person totally intent on doing great things.

He had the same problems getting into the shoes. It was the first time he had ever worn them. What were they? He was not at all more comfortable when shod. “These are the first shoes ever put on my feet, but with little pleasure of mine; if it please God I will in the future go barefoot.”19 Once this ceremony was over, everyone went into the church of the Carmine for the reading of the capitoli, the terms of agreement, that were to be carried to the viceroy. It was an important moment. The bells began the joyous peal “to glory,” a notable change of tone, for they had for days been sounding the call to arms. Other bells rang out too: San Lorenzo and Sant’Agostino.20 When all had taken their places, a notary began to read aloud the capitoli: In the name of God, of the Most Blessed Virgin of the Carmine, of the glorious San Gennaro, Sant’Anello, Sant’Antonio di Padua, and other 17 Anonymous, Storia di Masaniello, f. 28v. There will be further citations from this chronicle. 18 According to Tutini-Verde, Racconto della sollevatione, p. 59; and to Mayorica, I tumulti e revolutioni, f. 82r, this suit was a gift of the viceroy. 19 Mayorica, I tumulti e revolutioni, f. 82r. 20 Simonetta, Historia delle rivoluzioni di Napoli, f. 66r, and Anonymous, Storia di Masaniello, f. 32r.

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patrons and protectors of this most faithful city of Naples, to the honour, conservation, and glory of the Catholic Majesty of our most kind king, and lord, and the most reverend Signor Cardinal Filomarino our archbishop, and most beloved shepherd, of the most excellent Signor Duke d’Arcos viceroy and Capitan Generale of the Kingdom of Naples, most dear father of this most faithful people, and of Signor Tomaso Aniello d’Amalfi, Capo of this most faithful people, by means of whom it his pleases His Excellency in the name of His Catholic Majesty to restore to us, to amplify for us, to confirm for us the privileges written out below […].21

The people requested, as we have said: abolition of the gabelle, of the levy imposed by viceroy Medina, and of other impositions, with the exception of those “that they paid at the time of Emperor Charles V”; the direct election of the Eletto (cap. VI, VII, IX, XIV); the undertaking on the viceroy’s part to see that, within “three months,” ratification of the capitoli would come from Madrid, and to have the capitoli carved in “marble to place in the Piazza del Mercato and in all the other places where the people will want them, at their choice” (cap. VIII); the possibility that, “if the said capitoli and privileges are not observed, if the people want to take up arms again, it will not be taken as an act of rebellion […] in any manner, but as a just defence of the interests of the people” (cap. XIII); the exclusion from political life of those burned out (cap. XVII); pardon for Masaniello for having set fire to the door of the church of Santa Maria di Costantinopoli (cap. XXII); a prohibition of claiming it was rebellion if the people took up arms in defence of the capitoli. Rather the action would be called “just defence of the interests of the people” (cap. XXIII). While they read the capitoli, the reverend Pollio says, Masaniello spoke out several times to ask his people if they approved, or to explain the motives behind some point, a sign that he had indeed been personally involved: “‘My people, how does it seem to you, is it a good thing? Do you like them? Because I will go with the Most Eminent Signore [the cardinal] to His Excellency to get him to concede what is asked for.’ At these words all said in a loud voice ‘Vanne bone signò Tomas’Anello.’ [It’s good, Signor Tomas’Anello].”22 Others say that Masaniello also spoke up. It is interesting to see what he said concerning the Castle at Sant’Elmo, a question clearly hotly debated. 21 Tutini-Verde, Racconto della sollevatione, pp. 66 ff. In the copy appearing in Fuidoro, Successi historici, pp. 60–65, Masaniello is not cited in the preamble. 22 Pollio, Historia del Regno di Napoli, f. 35v.

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I was determined to have in hand the fortress of Sant’Elmo, but now that I see how readily His Excellency [the viceroy] has favoured me, and on account of the very great prayers on the matter addressed to me by our most eminent shepherd, I have decided to desist from this proposal, as we always have a door open, for having a rule in our regard respected, which is that it is always allowed us to take up arms without being accused of rebellion.23

So, here, Masaniello took responsibility for the stipulation that authorized the people to resort to arms if the viceroy failed to respect the capitoli. This was the final point, perhaps because it had been added afterwards. In sum, he concluded, explaining, “‘My people, look how much I have done for you, and if it all seems to you to please you, answer by raising your hands, and, should it not, then nothing should be done with it,’ and everyone then shouting loudly yes, they raised their hands, and shouted, ‘Viva the king, and our liberator of the fatherland, T[omaso] Aniello’.”24 In the Storia di Masaniello, we read that Genoino spoke soon after and hid poorly his touch of distaste for Masaniello’s role. In any case, it seems that he said in the end, that there had arrived the thing that he had had his heart on, for many years already; for which reason he had borne so many travails, and suffered very long stints in prison, and that, thanks to the grace of God, by means of God they [the travails] had ended and that they [the people] should recognize that from Him came every benefit; with these exaggerations that to every one of them was owed honour and glory, he gave cause for great jealousy among them.25

We do not know if dottore Genoino had promised the viceroy his support in exchange for an important role in the new political-institutional arrangement that he desired. Fuidoro claims, as we have said, that the dottore had been an accomplice of the conspirators. On one of the days of tumult – Fuidoro does not tell which – he went one evening to the castle to parley with the viceroy: These official messages went to Genoino several times with promises of remuneration and in the end the viceroy managed to have Genoino 23 Anonymous, Succinta Relatione della sollevatione di Napoli, f. 93v. 24 Ibid. 25 Anonymous, Storia di Masaniello, f. 32v. For this speech by Masaniello, see Giraff i, Le rivolutioni di Napoli, p. 119.

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at the palace, and as a result they came together one night. Genoino promised to calm things down, but wanted to be repaid with [the post of] President of the Camera [i.e. the Sommaria, the kingdom’s high fiscal court], and Dean of that tribunal, as he said that he had deserved them for a long time now, and also for the travails he underwent for the Duke of Osuna, the viceroy.26

A few days later, on the thirteenth, Genoino was indeed installed as President of the Camera della Sommaria. In the Neapolitan state archive lies a short letter, hand-written, by virtue of which the Duke of Arcos ordered the “Royal Camera” [the Sommaria] to confer that job on him, “before, and in precedence, of everything else your lordship has written to me about.”27 But back to the Carmine: after the ceremony, Masaniello asked the cardinal to bless the people, and he did so.28 Then, they prepared for the cavalcade. The cardinal went out in his carriage, with his maestro di camera; beside him were, on his right, Masaniello on horseback, and on his left, Eletto Arpaia. Behind them came other authorities, and then a huge crowd of men and women of every age, even the old, sixty and seventy years old, armed as best they could manage but keen to cooperate for the “safety of the fatherland.” They were 10,000 as they left the market, but as they pursued their path many others joined, so that on arriving at the castle they numbered 30,000.29 They marched along streets recently swept clean and adorned with swags of embroidered cloth draped from the balconies, and, as they went, bands of the people knocked down the nobles’ standards – 160 of them in all.30 Masaniello cut a happy, proud figure. In one hand he held a sword, in the other the capitoli they were bringing to the palace.31 He said, “I have liberated you from the servitude you had, with the knights, and I have removed the gabelle.”32 The streets echoed with “Liò,” the Alarbi shout. Giovanni, Masaniello’s brother, saluted the crowd and gave out gold zecchini. 26 Fuidoro, Successi historici, p. 56. 27 The document, dated 13 July, can be found at ASN, Regia Camera Sommaria, Viglietti originali, vol. 16, f. 191. 28 Donzelli, Partenope liberata, p. 49. 29 Tutini-Verde, Racconto della sollevatione, p. 60. 30 Giraffi, Le rivolutioni di Napoli, p. 119. 31 Ibid., p. 120, and also Agostino Nicolai, Historia, p. 62; this volume was already completed in June of 1648, as is clear from the dedication, dated “25 giugno 1648.” The author was born in Burgundy. He was, at some point, a direct witness of the revolt. In August 1647, the plebs of Chiaia want to the palace of cardinal Trivulzio. where he was staying, and compelled him to lead them to the house of the prince of Ascoli, “under pain of beheading”: ibid., p. 136. 32 Casanatense Anonymous, Narrazione della rivolta, f. 47v.

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He too was re-clad, in a suit of turquoise cloth-of-gold and a curious black hat with white and blue feathers. At the end, unexpectedly, just before they reached the palace walls, up came a captain of the viceroy’s guard, merely to extend a welcome on His Excellency’s part. Masaniello had to go in, for him no easy thing. For, despite the cardinal’s reassurance, he feared a trap, as we see from what he said soon after. Before setting off, perhaps to beat back fear, he mounted into the saddle and began to talk. His long speech gave chills to all, Simonetta tells us, because, although he spoke in lowly Neapolitan, it seemed the words of a man of “the greatest experience.” “Truly, he left everyone fearful, as he was a lowly man a poor fishmonger […] and this is the truth, nothing added, nothing omitted, that was written by one who was present.”33 What he asked of the people made a strong impression: should he fail to return alive from the palace, they were to set it on fire. Giraffi reconstructed that speech as follows: “My dear, beloved people, let us render thanks to God with eternal voices of praise for having our original liberty back […] Already, we are free from every fiscal charge, already freed from so many burdens, already all the gabelle have been removed and extinguished, already our dear liberty has been returned to us, in which the late King Ferdinand placed us, and which the Emperor Charles V confirmed for us. I want nothing for me, and I ask for nothing except your public good. The most eminent Signor Cardinal Archbishop knows my righteous intention, told him many times and repeated to him with an oath, and, as at the beginning of our just resentments, by the desire of His Eminence to see the people calmed, he offered me with regal magnificence two hundred scudi a month from his own purse for my whole life long, so long as I did not press further the claims we put forward, if I took on the task of bringing you all to agreement in the briefest and best way possible, I have always refused that offer, with infinite thanks. Moreover, had I not been constrained an hour ago by his Eminence with the tenacious bond of a precept, and frightened with a fearsome thunderbolt of excommunication, to dress myself in the costume that I am wearing, I would never have taken off my ordinary sailor’s rags, for that is how I was born, and lived, and intend to live and die. After the fishing for public liberty that I will do in the stormy sea of this afflicted city, I will return to my old business of fishing, and selling fish without keeping for myself even a bit of string for my house. So, I beg of you, as all I want is that when I die you be willing each of you 33 Simonetta, Historia delle rivoluzioni di Napoli, f. 69r.

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to say an Ave Maria. Do you all promise me that?” “Yes, yes,” everyone answered, “We will do it willingly, but may you live a hundred years!” “I thank you,” answered Masaniello, “and for the love I bear you I want to give you a piece of advice. Don’t give up your arms until there comes from Spain confirmation of the graces, and capitoli of the king our lord. Do not trust the nobility at all, for they are traitors and our enemies,” and as he said that he used words so full of scorn that for modesty I omit them. Then he went on, “I am going to negotiate with His Excellency and within an hour you will see me again, or at the latest tomorrow morning. But if tomorrow morning I do not appear, set fire to the entire city; don’t you all give me your word?” “It is just what we will do,” the people replied resolutely. “You can be sure of it.” “Good, good!” replied Masaniello, “His Excellency has had a great taste of what has been done till now, because if indeed the gabelle have been removed, His Majesty has however lost nothing. This nobility, our enemy, has indeed lost […].” After saying these words and many others, at the end he turned to the cardinal and said, “Most eminent lord, bless this people.” His Eminence leaned his head from the coach, and with two signs of the cross, from one door and the other, gave his pastoral benediction.34

All around, it was a scene of war. Maestro di campo generale Tuttavilla guarded Pizzofalcone, high ground just inland from offshore Castel del’Ovo, with his legion of Italian infantry. In front of the palace were fortifications and trenches running all the way down to Castelnuovo, all manned by hundreds of soldiers with their captains. But Masaniello screwed up his courage and headed toward the palace. For part of the way, a company of women, flags in hand, were his only escort.35 They walked right behind the cardinal, Arpaia, and Genoino. Masaniello’s brother remained outside. The viceroy met them at the stairs, choosing to come well forward out of special regard for his guests of honour. Masaniello, dismounting, seeing the viceroy unarmed and happy to receive him, threw himself at his feet. “Viva the king, and I am in Your Excellency’s hands: you may put me on the wheel [of execution].” The viceroy embraced him, and, in Spanish, said, “My son, liberator of this people and scourge of the rebels.” Then, Masaniello faltered and the Duke of Arcos worried. No accident should arise at a time like this, so at once he had him brought a little water. Masaniello recovered swiftly and entered the palace, going all the way to the Sala of Alba, set up for the 34 Giraffi, Le rivolutioni di Napoli, pp. 122–125. 35 Casanatense Anonymous, Narrazione della rivolta, f. 47r.

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occasion. The Capitan Generale was well received by the viceregina and by some ministers there, as if he were “a great prince.”36 The viceroy had opted for a gentle stance: he had to win the plebeians over. The two then sat and spoke a while together. Naturally, they discussed the capitoli. The viceroy pretended to approve and to want to apply them. Masaniello said that he regretted the losses that the abolition of the gabelle had produced and, altogether spontaneously, made a worrying proposal: to make good those losses why not lay hands on the “sacred furnishings” in the churches? Why have chalices of gold? Could they not be made of wood? The Duke of Arcos “refused the offer with courteous words, as he, like anyone, understood the danger of putting his hand in dough of that kind.”37 Whistling and shouts from the street below then invited Masaniello to come to the palace balcony, so he stepped out. They shouted many Vivas. The churches of San Luigi, Santo Spirito, la Croce, and Santa Maria degli Angeli rang out the joy peal. The whole city seemed to participate in the event. But Masaniello disapproved. So the ringing soon stopped. “My people, I thank God and the Most Holy Madonna that today all that we desire will be agreed to and Viva our king of Spain […] Viva the Duke of Arcos. Viva the most faithful people of Naples.” For each “Viva” of Masaniello, the people all answered in kind.38 According to Tutini and Verde, Masaniello also said, “My people, this is the Signor Duke of Arcos, viceroy for His Majesty our lord, whom we all must obey and ask for pardon.”39 The Duke of Arcos then embraced the young Capopopolo, a gesture much appreciated. Several chroniclers record those moments and the emotion, even the tears, because a “Signore” embraced Masaniello. Then, began the reading out of the capitoli, but, as voices from below blocked the sound, the Capitan Generale placed his index finger beside his nose, and at once absolute silence reigned. Beside the palace, bursting with bodies, it was as if there were no one there. An extraordinary event, this 36 Anonymous, Relatione della sollevatione della città di Napoli dell’anno 1647, f. 50v. 37 De Santis, Historia del tumulti, pp. 112 ff. Mayorica adds “and the greater evil madness is that, had he not died, it certainly would have been done”: I tumulti e revolutioni, f. 94r. Beaumont, speaking of the Annunziata, affirms that the cardinal used a paper, given him by Masaniello, to defend the institution: Beaumont, Varios discursos, p. 93, an entry concerning Friday. This helps us understand his position at the side of Masaniello, who was ever more elusive as he become more explicitly faithful to the king and the viceroy. 38 Mayorica, I tumulti e revolutioni, f. 88r. 39 Tutini-Verde, Racconto della sollevatione, p. 62. According to these two authors, this behaviour by the viceroy displeased the cardinal. He had asked the viceroy to pay his respects in private. It seems that the viceroy’s excessive gesture of devotion to Masaniello upset him.

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silence; it took root in the minds of those who stood there. The nineteenthcentury historian Emmanuele Palermo recounts how his father had spoken of it, having heard it from his own grandfather: This fact reported by Donzelli is perfectly true, as it was told me in the same way when I was a youngster, by my father who said he had heard it from his. My father died at 82, in the year 1818, my grandfather died at almost a hundred in 1746. So my great grandfather was present indeed at this fatal revolution and could tell a fact like that to his children. 40

Masaniello was obeyed again, utterly, when he asked the people to move back, taking off his hat, “to show that he was not upset, nor should others be upset by the departure of so many armed people.”41 The order was obeyed at once; His Excellency was amazed. At Masaniello’s wish, there remained only the “companies of Lavinaio, of the Mercato, and of the Conceria, the captains of which were Gennaro Annese, Peppo Palumbo and one other”. 42 The viceroy, says Pollio, must have thought himself at risk, standing at the side of that tamer, served by “so many proud lions.”43 Yet, he decided to mask his worry, continuing to use courtesies that seemed to work where force had failed. Greeting Masaniello, he conferred on him the title of Duke of San Giorgio and offered him a chain of gold, said by many to be “of great value.” The Capopopolo wanted nothing to do with it, but then hung it around his neck, very likely at the cardinal’s behest. In the days that followed, he was seen wearing that big necklace; he seemed a proud man, a thing he had never been. 44 For his part, Masaniello promised the viceroy that he would ensure that the king received five million scudi. 45 The two men then agreed to meet 40 Emmanuele Palermo, La rivoluzione di Napoli dell’anno 1647 conosciuta sotto il nome di rivoluzione di Masaniello descritta da E. P. Parte prima dal principio della rivoluzione sino alla morte di Masaniello. 1837, SNSP, XXVIII C 14, p. 84. 41 Fuidoro, Successi historici, p. 58. 42 Ibid. 43 Pollio, Historia del Regno di Napoli, f. 37v. 44 The story of the offer of a neck chain is controverted. Some deny that Masaniello accepted it (Tontoli, Casanantense Anonymous, De Fiore). Others affirm that he did so (Giraffi above all, who specifies that he accepted it because the cardinal told him to). That among those who affirm it are authors rather well inclined to Masaniello suggests that he may indeed have accepted it. A long nineteenth-century tradition would deny this fact, in order to portray Masaniello as incorruptible. See Donzelli, Partenope liberata, p. 51, and Tutini-Verde, Racconto della sollevatione, p. 61. 45 Sauli, Copia di lettera, p. 369.

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again on Saturday, at the cathedral, for a new ceremony, where the viceroy would swear on the bible to respect the capitoli. Leaving the palace, Masaniello exclaimed, “My people, His Excellency has conceded everything I asked for and he has conceded to me that the said Privileges of Charles V will be carved in marble on an epitaffio in the middle of the market for future memory.”46 The cardinal offered Masaniello a seat in his coach and he accepted. Many escorted them with torches in hand, it being already night. 47 Back at Filomarino’s palace, the Capitan Generale had a chance to show his affection for His Eminence: the Marquise of Cervinara came up, begging him to free her son, just now captured by the plebs. The cardinal did not even have to ask Masaniello to intervene.48 Then Masaniello returned to the market, where he issued a ban: By order of the Most Illustrious Signore Maso Anello di Amalfi, Capitan Generale of the most faithful people, it is ordered that no person, of whatever status or condition, dare go out at night from two hours after dark, under pain of death, excepting only those who go calling midwives for a woman about to give birth, or the most holy sacrament of the eucharist for the use of the sick, which thing must be done with the permit of the Captain of the Street. 49

So ended an intense and surprising day. They had arrived only at the first step for an accord with the viceroy, which, such was the general illusion, would have marked a turning point in the city’s life. Meanwhile, the controls to keep the city safe continued: the guards were at the trenches and asked passers-by for their first and second names.50

46 Pollio, Historia del Regno di Napoli, f. 36v. 47 Giraffi, Le rivolutioni di Napoli, p. 129 and others. 48 Ibid., p. 130: this son of the marquise was said to be the cardinal’s nephew. Luigi Barionovi discusses the episode of his liberation in “La terra di Cervinara in una descrizione inedita del XVII secolo,” Samnium, XLIX (1976): 131–169. He writes, “in front of two true aristocrats, the one who behaves like a signore is the Neapolitan fisherman.” The cardinal would then obtain other favours from Masaniello, including one discussed by various writers: the demolition of a house that blocked the light from his house: De Santis, Historia del tumulto, p. 120. 49 The decree appears in Capecelatro, Diario, p. 70. 50 Giraffi, Le rivolutioni di Napoli, p. 131.

VIII. A Day of “Justice” Friday (Day 12) Abstract Masaniello continues to deal with the food supply; he also hands out assorted ‘patents’ to his plebeian friends. Thanks to the contemporary sources, we can lay out their life stories, which often share traits in common with Masaniello’s own. With the viceroy’s assent, he deals out justice at the Market, as if he were the city’s long-desired ‘justicer’. But Masaniello’s harsh rulings provoke revulsion. The sources show how he naively thinks that he acts here in harmony with the viceroy. A witness writes, ‘he was assisted by royal judges.’ Keywords: Masaniello’s friends, prostitution, violence, passions, executions, fear.

1.

The Plebeians Seen Up Close

The next day, Masaniello resumed his various tasks, above all, providing for the people’s sustenance. He issued a decree addressing the food supply. Oil was short, as the big dealers, facing newly fixed low retail prices, were instead selling in bulk to the convents or the rich. So, Masaniello commanded them either to sell to the shopkeepers or to appear before him. Besides that, he gave out orders concerning public safety, a sign that he much feared new sorties by the bandits. This is a clue that he had begun to dissociate the bandits from the viceroy. The most faithful people of this most faithful city of Naples, having come to know that those who own the oil cisterns are selling it at a high price per stara to monasteries and rich persons to the grave prejudice and damage of the citizens, and, desiring to remedy this inconvenience, we order and command all the persons who have oil cisterns who are selling

D’Alessio, S. Masaniello. The Life and Afterlife of a Neapolitan Revolutionary Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2022 doi: 10.5117/9789463721455_ch08

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it by the stara [ca. ten litres] that from today on, under pain of rebellion, they should not sell it except to shopkeepers and to those who sell it by the quart around Naples. And if they want to buy by the stara they should come to us. Besides, we order and command under the same pain all the captains, both of the ottine [districts] and of the infantry, that they provide the artillery with bags of musket balls or with cartridges of tin full of the aforesaid balls, because the range is short, where balls don’t work. And, besides, we order and command all the citizens of whatever degree, status and condition, that from today on, when the first hour of the night rings, they have to be at home, and if there is some urgent necessity, like the Holy Sacrament, or childbirth, they must inform the captain of the militia, who must give them at once soldiers enough to accompany them where needed. Moreover, that all the soldiers of the companies of this aforesaid people must give obedience to their captains, both as soldiers [to captains] of the ottine, and to their other superiors, under pain of four hoists of the rope, or, if the said captains and their superiors think differently, they should be sent to us arrested. By order of His Excellency and of the most faithful people. Day 12 of the present July, 1647. Tommaso Aniello d’Amalfi.

From some sources we learn that, on that Friday morning, he distributed command posts to his soldiers. Among the names we know appear: Andrea Polito, upon whom he conferred the title of maestro di campo generale; Giuseppe Palumbo, to whom he entrusted the militias of the Conceria – clearly the old chief had been forgiven his behaviour back on Monday; and to Annese he entrusted the Lavinaio.1 The Casanatense Anonymous was there for the event, which was not only public, but also rather important, as a good many men were receiving official recognition. What that author tells us reveals things about Masaniello’s world hitherto in part unknown. Let us read straight from his chronicle: That morning Mase Aniello began to distribute offices to diverse barefoot folk, his peers. To a Gioseppe Vernasso, fishmonger from the Pietra del Pesce, for whom Mase Aniello had been a worker, a man of lowest 1 Information about Polito, and about one Pietro de Leva come from Anon., Storia di Masaniello, f. 34v. There is further information in Piacente, Le rivoluzioni del Regno, p. 55.

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condition, his mother being a whore, he was imprisoned in the Vicaria for diverse crimes […] having had two sisters who were prostitutes, one of whom today lives at the brothel, the other was killed by her lover in Messina, and he having had as wife a prostitute […] to this man Mase Aniello donated [the coastal town of] Torre del Greco, making him captain for war of the whole quarter from the Zabatteria [west of the market, near the port] across to the Middle Mole, both inside and outside the city wall, authorizing him to keep persons in prison, whom he could punish with the gallows and the wheel [of execution], and hang and put to the wheel whomever he pleased, with the greatest authority. And his son he made war captain of the whole Amalfi coast. To Giovanni Bianco, also a fishmonger from the said place [Pietra del Pesce], even less honoured than Vernasso, who at the start was a tavernkeeper and then a fishmonger, having all these days caused him to accompany him on horseback, with a baton of office with the title of Capitan Generale of ten companies, calling him his treasurer and assigning him to hold many thousands of gold zecchini from the persons he had robbed. Gioè alias Ciommo, seller of cheese and oil by the guard post of the port, companion of this Masaniello, he made perpetual captain of the food office of the kingdom, and he gave the wife a string of pearls worth two thousand scudi and other handsome things.

From these first hints, we begin to see some of the traits of the Neapolitan plebs of those days: Gioseppe Vernasso was “fishmonger of the Pietra del Pesce,” “he had his mother a whore,” and “he was imprisoned in the Vicaria for diverse crimes.” Masaniello had been in his service and very likely was grateful to him. He “donated” Torre del Greco to him. Besides the mother, the other women of his family prostituted themselves. So, Gioseppe’s origin resembled Masaniello’s. Their social condition, as with other men from the Pietra del Pesce, Masaniello’s social class – the list here bears witness to it – was deeply scarred by prostitution and crime. It is worth to read on in the source – we transcribe more – stopping at a passage about one Antonio Cesarano, who the Anonymous says was “corrupted” by the viceroy, who gave him a banca criminale [judgeship] of the Vicaria in exchange for his promise to kill Masaniello. The passage is important because it suggests that, all the while Masaniello was beginning to trust him, the Duke of Arcos was scouting Masaniello’s world, confident that he could find those who would help him resolve the “problem.” And the Anonymous was not mistaken. But it would be a surrender to later stereotype to conclude that the plebs were prone to “betrayal.” Rather, it pays to heed

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what Tutini and Verde write about the general tendency to betrayal and the insidious terrain of daily life in the Naples of their day. As they put it: “Oh, the instability of our nation, which thinks it no big deal to become the slave of the Spaniards due to its instability, betrayals, and inconstancy […] and to allow the Spaniards as many betrayals as they plotted against them and against the fatherland, hoping for wholesale prizes from them, but they were well paid later.”2 Let us now return to the list by the Anonymous to meet more of Masaniello’s followers. Marco Vitale, whom he had for his secretary, this was the son of a Matteo Vitale Cavayolo, born a Jew. The mother was the daughter, and the wife, of an employee of a baker. The said Matteo kept her as his mistress while her husband was alive. When he [the husband] died, [Matteo] married her, having begotten this Marco and a girl child […]. This Marco was jailed in the prison of the Grande Almirante, where the said Masaniello was also imprisoned, for debt, and this Marco served as his underling in the prison and for this reason he made him secretary of the kingdom and perpetual criminal judge of the Great Court of the Vicaria, with pre-eminence over all the judges of longer standing. Peppo Facerella, alias de Pascariello [dialect for Pasqualino], likewise a fishmonger from the Pietra del Pesce, son of a sailor who has for some years been the procurer for his sister, Giovannella Facerella, a prostitute, besides having taken as his wife a whore from the quarter, him he made perpetual Captain of Justice with the commission to go through the knights’ houses and take their silver, jewellery, and cash, and bring them to the Market. He [Peppo] did it, but took them to his house, and not to the Market. Geronimo alias Ciommo Ruoppolo, fishmonger of the storehouse of San Giacomo degli italiani, son of a bobbin-wrapper [a primer of looms], had been in the galleys for robbery. Him he made infantry captain with a pay of one hundred scudi a month, with command of the entire Porto ottina from the San Giacomo storehouse and the Piazza dell’Olmo to the Puntone [the corner] of the Rua Catalana. Francesco alias Cicco Guallechia alias Giannelli, fishmonger at the San Giacomo storehouse he made corporal of the said Ruoppolo, with a pay of twenty-five scudi a month, paid by the ottina. This fellow was one of 2 Tutini-Verde, Racconto della sollevatione, pp. 81–82.

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the honoured men of San Giacomo, having been under judicial inquiry at the Vicaria for many infamous crimes, and the court ordered that the life be driven out of him [that he be put to death]. This man […] committed assorted extortions under the pretext that Mase Aniello wanted them done, but because he is protected by cardinal Trivulzio [viceroy of Sicily, 1647–1649], whom he serves as a pimp [the word is scratched out but still legible], one does not speak of it.3 Iacono Russo, alias Tarrella, a sailor of the Molo Piccolo, a man who from the day he was born had done nothing but smuggling, he made Perpetual Guardian of the Port, commanding that, when he went to the market to bring him information, he should go on horseback, with the most ample power over all the seamen of the kingdom. And he gave him the horse. To Donato Pagliucca, alias Boccettino senza Naso [Nose-less Little Flask], fisherman of the Pietra […] he gave the tithe of all the fish caught from Nisida [an island off Posillipo], along the Naples coast down to Capri, in perpetuity. To Peppe Palumbo of the Conceria, companion of the Perrone mentioned above, a delinquent of evil life, his work naught but smuggling, who has cheated the customs of more than two million, he made captain over all the captains of the people […] even though at the beginning, at the time of Perrone’s death, he ordered that they cut off his head too. He went and threw himself at his [Masaniello’s] feet, and won his case, for he [Peppe] made the anger pass, and he [Masaniello] repaid him as above. To Antonio Cesarano, he gave the charge of official paper [mastredattìa] of the Campania for having run it well, although, afterwards His Excellency gave him a criminal court of the Vicaria, making him master of the art of that tribunal for some secret services done by the said Antonio in that revolution against Masaniello, because he tried to have him killed. Gioè de Amalfa, his brother, he [Masaniello] made Commissario generale of the Countryside, so that his [own widowed] sister-in-law 3 Giannella was not the only one to attempt extortion in Masaniello’s name. There is the well-known case of a young man who passed himself off as his nephew and tried to raise money from, among others, Modena’s resident agent. The young man was eventually arrested. For details, see De Fiore, Racconto de Tumulti popolari, p. 39.

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might be able to remarry. His brother-in-law he made Maestro di Campo of twenty-four companies, with which he was not required to leave the city, except to the casali, and he left the job of keeper of a fruit shop and an inf inite number of jobs to other lowly persons, his peers, providing them with a free hand, as if he had already been crowned over the kingdom of Naples, not knowing that the crown [in question] was not of the kingdom, but rather the kind [a crown of cuckoldry] that every day his wife put on him, among the taverns and the stables. 4

Let us now watch the strategy the viceroy adopted after the visit to the palace. The Duke of Arcos did not hint to Masaniello that he wanted him to give up his command, or that he himself wished to take back all the functions of a viceroy, including the running of justice. Rather, to keep his role in the conspiracy under wraps, he wished to sustain Masaniello, so he issued a proclamation bidding all bandits to leave the kingdom. The decree was ambiguous, as Tutini and Verde note, as it also seemed to slip the bandits a warning. Here is a brief extract (original in Spanish): “We order on pain of death that there depart, without delay, all bandits [or “banished men” – another reading] of this most faithful city [and] its towns, with the same penalty of death and the loss of all their goods. We order that no person of whatsoever quality and station keep them in his house, or under his protection.”5 The viceroy not only intended to seem innocent of the plot. He also tried, as Piacente affirms, to stir up “nausea.”6 Only by ensuring that the people tired of Masaniello, or considered him a tyrant and madman, could he retake full control of the city without provoking reactions. That day’s bandit hunt and executions certainly undermined the consensus favouring Masaniello. In his chronicle, Fra Mayorica recounts what happened at his convent: “It was explored by a great crowd of people, and risked being set on fire, as you will hear. It is worth noting how, yesterday, by some of our ill-wishers 4 Casanatense Anonymous, Narrazione della rivolta, ff. 52r ff. 5 Tutini-Verde, Racconto della sollevatione, p. 64. 6 Piacente wrote as follows: “But the supreme authority of Masaniello and the obedience the people bore him so caught the mind of the duke off its guard, that he could not secure the Kingdom without making him die. So, as he thought that his life was very harmful to the king’s interests, he did his utter best to bring off the action. It was easy for the duke to pursue his intent with a thousand tricks. Nonetheless, he contrived to have him fall into so much nausea on the part of those most dear to him, that the people on its own would decide to take the power away from him.”: Piacente, Le rivoluzioni del Regno, p. 57.

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living nearby, word was given to Masaniello that we were sheltering fifty bandits in the monastery.”7 So, Masaniello ordered the monastery kept under watch. Towards the third hour of the night, some of his men, made suspicious by some movements, believed that the monks were hiding bandits. They were on the verge of setting the place on fire when Father d’Ammelino shouted that it was a mistake, and, speaking with Arpaia, forestalled the violence. Masaniello, meanwhile, condemned other men to death, many of whom, wrote Capecelatro, deserved their fate. Among them was Giovanni, or “Cianno,” a sailor from Chiaia who “served the Duke of Maddaloni, bringing him fish, and who abused the sailors with cudgeling, with the said duke at his back; nobody could speak out nor even get information. Masaniello had the head of this Cianno cut off and sent atop a pole all around the city: afterwards, they dispatched it to Chiaia to plant it [in the ground].”8 Capecelatro adds an important detail: “God permitted them to receive this punishment at the hands of Masaniello, men who, thanks to the powerful persons who backed them, had not suffered royal justice. It seemed strange that they died so suddenly, without formal judgment, nor were their pleas of innocence heard, as, reasonably, is customary among the judges in the tribunals. Besides, it is certain that many innocents died, not having committed any wrong at all.”9 This tone of reproof and disgust appears in other chronicles as well, for instance in that by Simonetta, who wrote that it was chilling to see men so readily play the hangman.10 Ottaviano Sauli, the Genoese resident we have met before, also recounts various actions and condemnations. His account for this day and those that followed, reads: Friday, the twelfth of the said month [July], in the morning they roasted alive in the oven a person who had made bread a few ounces short. That evening, another person accused of the same thing, in the evening they had his beard and his hair hoed off in the middle of the market, and they sent him to His Excellency, so that he could give him the greater punishment that he desired. They hanged a tavern-keeper who at night had 7 Mayorica, I tumulti e revolutioni, ff. 83r ff. 8 Della Moneca, Istoria delle revoluzioni, ff. 22v, 37r. 9 Capecelatro, Diario, p. 73. This page relates to the events of Saturday but bears on a phase that began on Friday. 10 Simonetta, Historia delle rivoluzioni di Napoli, f. 75r. Others, too, criticized the many hangings.

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killed a sentinel. They cut off the head of a Sicilian accused of accepting fifteen carlini to kill a man. They had gallows and wheels [of execution] at many points of the city. He took a youngster, who brought the news that 4000 infantry and 1600 horsemen were coming against the people, and sent him to His Excellency, who sent him back, to have him hanged as an impostor. He [Masaniello] had seven secretaries, and ten ministers, or perhaps executors of justice, and he was feared, obeyed, and served by all, at his mere gestures. All the bandits and abbots who lived an evil life whom they caught were killed at once, and if they did not do the job at once, he stood with a harquebus at the window, and pretended to shoot, but they were held by five or six who were around them, in such a way that he never did it [never fired]. And among those abbots there was brought to him, in a dark costume and without the cloak, in conformity with the aforesaid decree, archbishop Cafarelli of Santa Severina, who was in great danger of being killed, had he not shown the archbishop’s cross under his clothing, and, being recognized by Father Maestro Fra Gioseppe de Rossi, a Franciscan, theologian of the Signor Cardinal, he [de Rossi] had him freed, explaining that the said Monsignore was the nephew of the pope, and that he was coming in his service, and at once Masaniello set him free and told him that he should go to Rome and tell the pope that he [Masaniello] wanted Benevento and Maddaloni, and he gave him a quantity of carlini found in the house of Geronimo Letizia […]. To another archbishop, who came to ask his permission to depart to his residence, he [Masaniello] said that he had the face of a worthy man and that he would write to the pope to have him made a cardinal. He wanted to help him with [departure from] the seacoast. He [the archbishop] thanked him, and then he [Masaniello] wanted for certain to have him accompanied by four hundred men as far as his embarkation. A very beautiful horse worth four hundred ducats was sent to him [Masaniello]. He sent it right away to the royal cavalry, saying that it was useful to His Majesty and not to him. Likewise he sent to the said stables and to His Excellency and to many others barley and straw for their stalls and other gifts and considerations, and in particular he sent the Signor Viceroy a great clock of Don Gioseppe Carafa, saying, “carry this sound to His Excellency.”11

This text is little more than a list of acts of justice: he had a baker roasted in the oven, he had a beard “hoed” [shaved off], and so on. Let us pause for a 11 Sauli, Copia di lettera, pp. 368–369.

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moment at that first act of “justice,” which, as will see, would later be read in England as proof of Masaniello’s tyranny. In the chronicle of the notary, Montanario, we read: He ordered, under pain of rebellion, that the houses of all the bakers be burned, and those who made bread were told to raise the palata [loaf], that had been of 24 ounces, to 28 ounces, and then to 30, and from there to 36, and, soon after, to 38, and in the end to 45, and because a baker at Borgo di Sant’Antonio did not obey, he was, at his order, burned alive in his oven along with his property as well.12

This notice comes with no further comment: perhaps because of the ferocious modes then widely used in punishment. Perhaps also on account of the current “state of exception,” the writer expressed no shock, even though this act surely stirred disapproval in many. Within a few weeks, with other episodes, it would be viewed as indubitable proof of excessive, or arbitrary power. When describing that day, Giraffi, for example, does not hesitate to speak of tyrannical rule, and he is not alone.13 When such writers treat these actions, they remark on Masaniello’s “metamorphosis.” From humble, he had grown ambitious. Thus they coach their readers to accept his tragic end as necessary. Nevertheless, both Sauli and Giraffi make clear, if they do not stress it, that the viceroy continued to support Masaniello. Reading Sauli, we see that, on that day, contacts between Masaniello and the viceroy were frequent: “[he] had his [the accused’s] beard and his hair hoed in the middle of the market, and they sent him to His Excellency”; “A very beautiful horse […] He sent it right away to the royal cavalry,” and so on. But Sauli’s most interesting notice comes later: “he put to death in diverse manners and without any orderly judgment many men, and he was assisted by royal judges.”14 So, Masaniello 12 Montanario, In questo libro vi sono notate, f. 7r. For the punishment of bakers: Della Porta, Causa di stravaganze, f. 50v, a writer who uses a variety of sources. 13 Giraffi, for one, insinuates that Masaniello resembled the Great Turk and then expatiates on his “tyranny”: Giraffi, Le rivolutioni di Napoli, p. 138. There are also references to Masaniello’s tyrannical rule in Tontoli, Il Mas’Aniello, p. 95: he began in humility but then started “to single out palaces and to command with violence and pride, without participating, as was his wont, with sharing grave deliberations with the people”; Capecelatro, Diario, p. 69: “But, as commanding was too sweet a thing…and one does not leave tyranny except by dying, once it has been occupied, as, precisely, one sees with Masaniello”; Nicolai, Narrazione Giornale, p. 70: “This power, so sovereign and tyrannical, born of the blind obedience of a raging plebs and just stirred up by the present state, kept Masaniello’s judgment altogether bedazzled.” 14 Sauli, Copia di lettera, p. 368.

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thought that he was acting not as an absolute lord, but as the “arm” of his lord, his supposed master, the viceroy. In sum, we must assay this great jumble of clues to evaluate Masaniello’s behaviour, now much debated. The claim that he failed to relinquish command out of ambition is but one of many, and it is far from solid. Let us review some others. Piacente, as we have noted, speaks of Masaniello as an ingenue, who just did not know how to wield power.15 Tutini and Verde affirm that the Capopopolo changed that day, thanks to a poison sprinkled on a “little branch of flowers” that the viceroy sent him. In their opinion, after that episode, while he was sleeping in his room, “the theologian [Giuseppe de Rossi] came in and signed many blank pages with the stamp with Masaniello’s name, that he left hanging from a cane. With those pages the Spaniards brought many munitions into Castel Sant’Elmo, where supplies were running low.”16 Capecelatro also speaks of a loss of lucidity: his brain “began to dry out, and to let in a frenetic humour, that, within a short time, made him go right out of his mind.”17 From Sunday on, and at the viceroy’s wish, as we shall see there would be talk of mad Masaniello.

15 “There arrived some gentlemen from the palace, who in the name of the Signor Viceroy brought diverse gifts and presents to Masaniello, thanking him for the refreshments sent to him at the castle, and they also made the same compliments on the part of the Signora Viceregina to his wife, who wanted to know how she was doing and wished on her own behalf that she would enjoy these gallant gestures”: Giraffi, Le rivolutioni di Napoli, p. 147; “He was quick to believe, and not very stubborn”: Piacente, Le rivoluzioni del Regno, p. 375. 16 Tutini-Verde, Racconto della sollevatione, p. 65. This allegation of poison very much reflects the anti-Spanish spirit of these two authors. They write: “It was the ancient usage of the Spaniards to use poison to manage various effects to gain their ends.” We will soon see that this was the opinion of others too, but with regard to a precise moment on the coming Sunday. In various Germanic languages the two senses of “poison” and “gift” often tangle: Roberto Esposito, “Dono,” in Enciclopedia del pensiero politico, edited by Roberto Esposito and Carlo Galli (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2000), pp. 196–197. 17 Capecelatro, Diario, p. 72.

IX. The Oath of the Duke of Arcos Saturday (Day 13) Abstract The duke’s concessions seem to be taking hold. At the market, work begins for the stone monument to the agreement, the ‘epitaph’, under commission to Cosimo Fanzago. Masaniello continues to issue orders and do justice. One of his sentences concerns a woman whose father has been killed: the killer’s brother wishes to wed her, but she resists. The Capopopolo protects her. Not all of Masaniello’s sentences are just, as even his supporter, Giuseppe Donzelli, concedes. At the cathedral, the crowd shouts, ‘Viva la Spagna.’ Masaniello goes to ask their forgiveness, sheds his fine turquoise suit and invites the people to repeat ‘You are nothing!’. Keywords: Justice, Masaniello’s sentences, public ceremonies, oath, Naples’ cathedral

1.

I am Nothing

On Saturday morning began the work on the epitaffio, that was to be built in the market, to record forever the accords between the viceroy and the people.1 The Count of Oñate, says Fuidoro, “built a great fountain there.” A marquis commissioned a picture of it, which was then printed and carried to the Roman court. The pope, seeing the fountain depicted, is said to have exclaimed, “squirting blood,” alluding to the many executions the count had commanded, after the end of the revolt.2 Masaniello returned to issuing orders. Hearing of a theft of silver in the palace of the prince of Colle, a knight of the Somma line, he ordered the culprit put to death, as was done. One later sentence concerned a woman 1 Sauli, Copia di lettera, p. 370. 2 Fuidoro, Successi historici, p. 65.

D’Alessio, S. Masaniello. The Life and Afterlife of a Neapolitan Revolutionary Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2022 doi: 10.5117/9789463721455_ch09

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whose father had been killed. The killer’s brother desired a pardon, offering in exchange to marry the woman. As, to her, this marriage seemed “impious,” Masaniello commanded instead that within twenty-four hours she be given two hundred scudi, to marry whomever she pleased.3 That day, sources tell us, from his window he thundered against the knights. Some coins clipped of their edge-silver had been found at the house of one such knight; Masaniello wanted them shown to his people, to demonstrate what thefts knights committed. 4 For such deeds, as for other things he said, the people viewed him as “liberator of the fatherland and extirpator of crimes.”5 In some writings, we read of his liberality: a Spaniard handed him a petition averring that he was ill, “and in extreme need of money, without having even a bed to sleep on.” So, Masaniello had him given “two mattresses and all the other furnishings for making up a bed, and a little room appropriate to his status, and more than twenty ducats.” And he “married off girls and women of infamous life,” with dowry money extracted from the houses of the rich.6 Among those on whom Masaniello showered liberality was the Duke of Arcos. He now trusted him, or wanted to, and continued to inform and involve him, lest he seem a despot keen to usurp the viceroy’s post. Among other things, he sent his brother, dressed in a blue suit with gold lamé, with twenty captains of the people, to tell the viceroy that there had been a find: “many jewels and coins hidden in various places by diverse persons who had dealt in the royal patrimony.”7 The viceroy, meanwhile, continued to act mildly and respectfully towards Masaniello. Leaving the castle in the morning, he ordained that no knight enter. Thanks to this behaviour, like Masaniello, the people, too, began to trust him. He seemed a good prince indeed, almost accommodating towards the people. Donzelli records that some viceregal orders appeared with a notation at the bottom, “Having seen the present decree by order of His Excellency, on the part of the Most Illustrious Signore Tomaso Anello d’Amalfi Capitan Generale of this most faithful people, it is 3 Giraffi, Le rivolutioni di Napoli, p. 150. A rather different account of this improvised marriage appears in Anon., Vita di Masaniello, f. 213v: “Having compassion for her miserable condition, and of her being left a widow with two daughters, he had her married at once to the same barber who had killed him (her father), with (a dowry of) 300 ducats.” For Masaniello’s liberality towards poor and solitary women, and prostitutes, see also Capecelatro, Diario, p. 74. 4 Anonymous, Storia di Masaniello, f. 35v. 5 Ibid. 6 Capecelatro, Diario, p. 74. 7 Ibid.

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ordered that this aforesaid decree be given due execution.”8 To many, the Duke of Arcos must have seemed the more trustworthy of the two “princes,” especially on account of the new condemnations Masaniello was issuing. Besides provoking bewilderment, suffering, and “nausea” – and Piacente says that the viceroy intended these feelings – they also set people talking. Doubtless, there was at least one unfair condemnation, of a man reputed a bandit but later proven innocent; Donzelli, although pro-Masaniello, speaks of it. Where was talk of it, at least in certain groups, people surely began to curse the tyrant Masaniello. Thus, his devotion to his role, now connected to his alliance with the viceroy, was undermining him. A bit later, Masaniello showed great solicitude toward the viceroy, before and during the ceremony at the cathedral where the viceroy swore upon the Gospels to respect the capitoli. Masaniello had the streets swept and adorned, as he had for Thursday’s cavalcade, when he bade all gentlemen and dottori to stand in the doorways of their houses until the parade had passed.9 The order in which the people sortied seemed perfect: more than 100,000, in squadrons, with their “lieutenant generals, sergeants major, captains, and corporals.” Their brave show, says Della Moneca, surpassed that of the “ancient Roman People.”10 Although all seemed to be going well, at the procession Masaniello seemed nervous. They headed towards the palace, with the herald, the general mounted on a black horse the viceroy had given him, sumptuously caparisoned, along with his brother, and the others. Nettled by the many celebratory shouts, which Fuidoro justly calls “ill-founded,” Masaniello ordered no one to advance, but was disobeyed.11 Everyone followed him down to the expanse before the palace, where they found the Duke of Arcos already climbing into his carriage, perhaps cagily, so as not to receive so prickly a guest. The duke was accompanied by four coaches filled with his familiars and ministers. No Neapolitan knights were there, remarks Della Moneca, who was usually well briefed. Present were: the Signor Regent of the Vicaria [Don Luis Ponce de León, the brother of the Duke of Arcos, family again, just as the Visitor was his brother-in-law], the Count of Lumay and other lords came on other nearby carriages with 8 Donzelli, Partenope liberata, p. 52. 9 These men complied reluctantly with the order to stand before their houses, says Capecelatro, Diario, p. 75. 10 Della Moneca, Istoria delle revoluzioni, f. 513. 11 Fuidoro, Successi historici, p. 59.

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the Collateral Council, and Council of State: the Signor Regent Zufia, the Signor Regent Casanatte, the Signor Regent Capecelatro, the Signor Regent Caracciolo, and the Signor Regent Sanfelice [and] from the Council to State: il Signor Carlo dela Gatta, il Signor Cornelio Spinola, il Signor Corriere Maggiore [chief of the postal system], il Signor Thomase Blanco, il Signor Pompeo de Gennaro, the Duke of Belforte and other carriages with knights of the palace.12

All along the route to the cathedral, the people shouted, “Viva the king of Spain!” Giraffi writes that, “along the way, that cry resounded almost always, and, along with the loud echo of all the bells of the churches which it passed and with the pleasing sound of many trumpets it filled the hearts of all with celebration and happiness.”13 The Duke of Arcos, with cap in hand and a cheerful face, responded [in Spanish], “‘May God preserve them all, may God preserve them all!’ saluting with reverence all the portraits of Emperor Charles V, and our king, Philip IV.”14 One also heard the shout, “Viva the king without gabelle” and also [in Spanish], “Viva the king. Because he hears, he can say he is the king.”15 These were targeted messages, like arrows shot from one or the other side. But simple “Vivas” prevailed. The cavalcade halted at San Lorenzo Maggiore, before a portrait of Charles V. Masaniello said that he thanked the Madonna and God because the people had obtained what it desired and finished with the cry, “Viva the king of Spain!” There followed many cheers: “Viva, Viva, our king of Spain, and Masaniello.”16 To show his loyalty, he placed a medallion with the head of Charles V near the portrait, then kissed it and passed it to the Duke of Arcos, who did the same.17 According to Capecelatro, the viceroy’s secretary, Marco Vitale, at that moment gave the Duke of Arcos a picture of the emperor, and the viceroy thanked him, saying he could be paid no better homage.18 12 Della Moneca, Istoria delle revoluzioni, f. 51v. See also: Anonymous, Storia di Masaniello, f. 38v. 13 Giraffi, Le rivolutioni di Napoli, p. 155. 14 Della Moneca, Istoria delle revoluzioni, f. 51v. 15 “Viva the king, who today can decide to be king!”: Sauli, Copia di lettera, p. 371. 16 Mayorica, I tumulti e revolutioni, f. 88r. This passage from Mayorica validates the testimony of Tutini and Verde. 17 Tutini-Verde, Racconto della sollevatione, p. 66. Masaniello seemed then convinced that God and the king were allies. It is a conviction that reflects the close embrace between the Catholic church and the Spanish monarchy in the Catholic Reformation. On this see Musi, Masaniello: linee per una biografia, p. 275. 18 Capecelatro, Diario, p. 75.

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Finally, they arrived at the cathedral: Masaniello helped the Duke of Arcos enter, giving way to him. The viceroy then invited the senior chaplain, Don Juan de Salamanca, to bless him. At the centre of the church he saluted Ascanio Filomarino and other canons, and, finally, all took their places: the cardinal under a baldaquin, the viceroy on a seat with “velvet cushions.” Masaniello sat at the cardinal’s feet, signalling humility, but did not stay long. “And while they were reading some capitulazioni very desired by the people, Masaniello stood up and kissed the viceroy’s feet, in sign of gratitude to the cardinal who had arranged it and to the viceroy who had conceded it.”19 Moreover, every time he heard himself called “Signore” he made a gesture of wanting to take off his suit of cloth-of-silver, saying that he wanted to return to his craft. Finally, after the reading of the capitoli and the oath of the viceroy, on his knees, he gave a speech, in a state of extreme emotion. He said that the people of Naples had revolted against those who had enriched themselves at its expense under the pretext of serving His Majesty. From now on, the people were willing to be “gutted” to help the king. He himself had acted so as to assure that all the grants surrendered in his [the king’s] favour would arrive in his [the king’s] hands. Moreover, he promised the Duke of Arcos a grant of six million ducats, which could be had thanks to the imposition of “one ducat per moggio of land, even on the lands of the churchmen, and offered, at present, twenty-five thousand ducats for the castles and thirty thousand for the galleys.”20 Masaniello had already begun to sweep the institutions of the church into his money harvest for the king, an action that pleased neither the hierarchy nor the clerical rank and file. Here, for the first time, we glimpse reasons why some clerics opposed Masaniello in the next days, until his death. But let us return for now to the cathedral. When Masaniello had finished his speech, he went to the cardinal and the viceroy to thank them and crave their pardon. Among other things, he explained that what he had done had been at the behest of “blessed God, the Holy Spirit, and the Most Holy Madonna of the Carmine, and he had not done it for dignity and money, or for any other end.”21 And then, overwhelmed by the commotion, he began to try to strip off the fine suit he was wearing, saying “that he was no longer anything” and inviting the people to repeat with him, “You are nothing! You are nothing!” The Casanatense Anonymous, who was there in the church, reports that he spoke as follows: 19 Tutini-Verde, Racconto della sollevatione, p. 66. 20 Sauli, Copia di lettera, p. 371. 21 Della Moneca, Istoria delle revoluzioni, f. 54r.

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“My people, you have received what you desire in order to live without gabelle. Already, His Excellency has granted you the grace. I, from this day forward, am no longer anything […] obey him who is the master in whatever concerns obedience […].” And he began to tear to pieces all the clothing he was wearing, down to the shoes, saying that from what he had done he wanted no profit at all, and he was left in his cloth hose and his shirt, saying that his is how Masaniello the fishmonger deserves to be.22

This story echoes that of other chroniclers. In one we read, “First he thanked God and then the Duke of Arcos, and then he said, ‘What I do I do for the people and for me I want nothing, as I am a poor fisherman and I want to die poor,’ and as he spoke he tore his white vest, in front of his chest.”23 He was then urged to calm down. Then the ceremony finished with a Te Deum.24 Note that Giraffi, so influential upon later readers, here begins to insinuate that Masaniello’s behaviour was, at points, ridiculous. He tells how Masaniello said to one of the gentleman with the cardinal “that from this time forth he wanted to carry out the command as Capitan Generale of the City,” and then, that “he desired to go with the guard, and to be able to issue patents of off icers of war, and permits to carry arms” and that “His Excellency should dismiss all the knights from the castles to their houses, and many other such instructions.”25 Among these instructions, this one stands out, showing that he was making it clear that he did not want to give up command. Giraffi, in his narrative, stresses several times that Masaniello wished not to surrender power. He thus lets the reader think that, in a way, he alone condemned himself to death. In fact, a little further on, he writes: If Masaniello, at the point when on Saturday in the cathedral of Naples the Te Deum laudamus was sung, had renounced into the hand of the viceroy all the authority he had seized, and the command he had usurped, and had returned (as was his duty, and on the same day, and earlier, with so many protests had had sworn to do) to sell fish, then the people with very good reason could have put up proud colossuses and gold statues for the eternal memory of his spirited action on their behalf. But ambition blinded him at once, in such a fashion that cutting the brakes of reason, 22 Casanatense Anonymous, Narrazione della rivolta, f. 57v. 23 Mayorica, I tumulti e revolutioni, f. 88r. 24 Della Moneca, Istoria delle revoluzioni, f. 57r. 25 Giraffi, Le rivolutioni di Napoli, p. 157.

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he began on that very Sunday, the eighth day of the revolution, to do a thousand crazy things, indeed, doleful excesses of barbarous cruelty.26

This passage was not Giraffi’s. He transcribed it from an anonymous narrative, conserved at the Vatican Library, where one comes across it: Relazione del tumulto successo nella città di Napoli dalli 7 sino alli 30 di luglio 1647, dated 23 July.27 This manuscript reminds us yet once more how Giraffi’s work, well known and enjoyable, is a literary collage with an axe to grind: Masaniello, at first moderate and prudent, thanks to ambition became a tyrant. This argument lies not far from that by Filomarino, the authority whom Giraffi was most swift to praise. Let us read what the cardinal told the pope on 16 July, the day Masaniello died. That prudence, judgement, and moderation, hitherto shown in the decisions that he made, after the oath given by the viceroy and the Collateral [Council], on Saturday the 13th, in this my cathedral, for the observance and fulf illment of the concordats in favour of the people, set out on Wednesday the 11th, a day dedicated to the Most Blessed Virgin of the Carmine, to which this city is very devoted, he lost them [those virtues], and converted them into rashness, furore, and tyranny.28

For a full picture of what happened there, note that the Duke of Arcos did not ask Masaniello to give up his command. That is clear from a passage about that day (13 July) written by Pollio: After the said reading, His Excellency swore solemnly the capitoli in the presence of His Eminence and of the whole piazza [assembly] of the people, to observe this with these capitoli; he spoke, embracing the said Tommaso Aniello his companion making him Capitan for war and Generale of the whole army, and so this charge was accepted by the said Tommaso Aniello and the said Signori departed with great applause.29 26 Ibid., p. 174. 27 Anonymous, Relatione del tumulto successo nella città di Napoli dalli 7 sino alli 30 di luglio 1647, f. 11r. There are a few variants on this transposition. In the Relazione one finds: “authority and command”; in Giraffi this becomes: “arrogated authority and usurped command” and “some mad actions” becomes “a thousand actions, rather dolorous excesses, barbarous cruelty.” 28 Filomarino, Lettere, p. 386. 29 Pollio, Historia del Regno di Napoli, f. 38v. This story of Masaniello’s appointment as generale is confirmed elsewhere: in the letter to the pope by Emilio Altieri, Lettera dated 13 luglio, f. 347r, that reads: “They will open the tribunals as they had been, but the economic administration of

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Naturally, this argument for madness that stemmed solely from ambition or tiredness suited those who were keen to blame Masaniello alone for his bad end. We shall return to this point. Meanwhile, let us see how the day ended. The viceroy did not return straightaway to the palace, but wanted to go to the market. He intended to enter the church of the Carmine to thank the Virgin, but, with the great press of people, he detoured to the house of “the captain of the army of His Majesty.” Berardina appeared at her window in an elegant dress “of blue damask, decorated with only one ornament.”30 The viceroy saluted her kindly and she threw coins and candies.31 The gifts received over the past few days, not only from the viceroy and his consort, but also from ministers, seem not to have awakened her suspicion. Then, Masaniello joined her. The people crowded before her house were quick to express devotion, making the duke marvel: And, having admired how people were acting, and the courting [of Masaniello and his wife], the Signore was amazed. Many tried to express their obedience to His Excellency [the viceroy], who said to them all, “Pay reverence to my companion Tho[maso] Anello, who has all my authority,” and Tho[maso] Anello stood at his window observing not only the people, but also the actions of His Excellency, who, in the same fashion went away through the whole city, and they requested his graces and good governance, and the said Signore with great patience showed how he was contenting everyone, having granted everything they were asking for to that companion, their capo, and that is how the affair went.32

The scene did not unsettle the viceroy deeply. Back at the palace, he met with Genoino and Arpaia. As the Genoese Resident reports, “He sat in antechamber with Genoino, whom they have made Dean and President of the city will remain in the hands of the people, as dottore Genoino told me today, as he came to see me, they will put the military administration of the People in the hand of Maso Aniello as Capitan Generale.” But, modifying this, see also: “Already, from Capitan Generale he has renounced all the supreme command to the Signor viceroy, who remained the master, as he had been before, with the contentment and applause of all the city and people, expecting the said Capitan generale only to put to execution many good things begun, so as to be able to put together this donation and money, and also for the persecution of bandits, but all of this with the consent and agreement of His Excellency”: Anonymous, Alli 9 di luglio, p. 10. 30 Sauli, Copia di lettera, p. 372. 31 Pollio, Historia del Regno di Napoli, f. 38v: “and in this triumphant fashion (i.e. with coin and candy thrown, as at a Roman triumph) Tommaso arrived.” 32 Ibid., f. 39r.

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the Camera, giving endless embraces to him, and also to Arpaia, the new Eletto, who however remained standing. And when His Excellency went into the castle to the Signora Viceregina, everyone withdrew.”33 A source close to the cardinal and the viceroy concludes its account of that day with the words that, in the end, both men, after dinner, “were carried off by placid sleep,” after many nights spent thinking how to repair so many troubles.34

33 Sauli, Historia del Regno di Napoli, p. 372. This scene confirms that Genoino was elected Decano and President of the Camera della Sommaria before and not after Masaniello’s death. 34 Anonymous, Relatione della sollevatione della città di Napoli dell’anno 1647, f. 54v.

X. The Excursion to Posillipo Abstract Masaniello’s swift decline begins. When someone complains to Masaniello that salt is selling, per weight, at not six but seven carlini, he intervenes. He discovers that, at the expense of the poor, the new Eletto del Popolo is failing to assure the official prices on foodstuffs, which he has fixed. The chapter traces from the published and unpublished sources events both at the palace and then up the coast at Posillipo. Masaniello becomes less lucid; he begins to act erratically, lashing out against his own young followers. Why does this happen? Keywords: trial, Posillipo, wine, poison, madness

1.

Giraffi’s Lies

Certainly, Masaniello, despite the Duke of Arcos’s benevolent, accommodating stance, did not, as many seem to have expected, abandon his command. When someone complained to him that salt was selling, per weight, at not six but seven carlini, Masaniello intervened. With the man in charge before him, he asked who gave this order. When the fellow replied that it had been the Eletto del Popolo, Masaniello threatened to have the Eletto’s head cut off.1 This is but one sign of how his relations with the Eletto and with Genoino were no longer smooth. Nor were they as they had been with the cardinal. Giraffi casts light on this, recording actions injurious to friars by some of the Capitan General’s followers, who had gone in search of bandits: He gave orders, under pain of death, that everyone must reveal where the owners of the burnt houses had stored their goods and money. As a result, having had many tip-offs, he collected goods without number, even from the very churches and from the convents of men and women. 1

Della Moneca, Istoria delle revoluzioni, f. 58r.

D’Alessio, S. Masaniello. The Life and Afterlife of a Neapolitan Revolutionary Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2022 doi: 10.5117/9789463721455_ch10

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Having learned that, that Sunday morning, four banished men had taken refuge inside the Carminello church of the Jesuit fathers, he sent a great crowd to surround the church and cloister. As the doors were well shut, the besiegers pressed on with a number of pickaxes, until, piercing the wall, they entered and caught one, and swiftly cut off his head, as they then did to the three others. And, because one of those Fathers, keen on ecclesiastical immunity, and on saving the life and soul, not the body, of those unlucky men, tried to offer some resistance, the fellow, amidst the blows, was given a mortal wound, and some said that not long after, thanks to heavy wounds, he died of it.2

The cardinal could not abide such such actions, as is very clear from what happened next. Giraffi recounts his irritation: Having learned these things from an urgent messenger, His Eminence flared in anger, and, intending high-handed deeds, gave swift orders to confer with him. Masaniello sent back word that the thing had been done against his orders: they were only to have scared the nuns to get the goods back, not break down the doors. To satisfy His Eminence, he would, give a fitting punishment to the said captains, now done, as he had brought them before him and ordered them put to death, beheaded on a platform, with firm intention to take back in hand the aforesaid goods, which the mother nuns, fearing greater hurt, had themselves consigned to Signor Masaniello’s band.3

Soon after, Giraffi recounts other episodes to imply that Masaniello had gone “crazy” and had become a “tyrant.” Comparison with Sauli’s version, which Giraffi saw, makes clear that Giraffi took liberties with some of Sauli’s details. He does use that report, but reformulates it, transferring to Saturday episodes Sauli recounts for Friday. Among other things, he writes that the Archbishop of Santa Severina, Fausto Cafarelli, came to Masaniello dressed in clerical short dress and asking leave to depart. Masaniello not only granted the request, but also proffered an escort of 400 soldiers. The archbishop declined the offer, saying he was to go by sea, but Masaniello persisted, insisting on a forty-felucca escort, so that Cafarelli was forced to accept some money, “so as not to put his head at risk by talking back to a man so capricious and frenetic.” In the account by the Genoese resident, we read instead that the Archbishop of Santa Severina was, it happened, 2 Giraffi, Le rivolutioni di Napoli, pp. 163–164. 3 Ibid., p. 165.

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mistaken for an outlaw and nearly killed (as we have seen already). Finally told, by Fra’ Giuseppe de Rubeis, who the archbishop was, Masaniello had him freed. Here, Sauli differs from what Giraffi writes. It was, in fact, for a different departing archbishop that Masaniello wished to furnish an escort to shipside. 4 From Sauli, who was at the viceregal palace, Giraffi picked up other items: that Masaniello had the house of a woman baker burned down, as her bread was under-weight; that he had other bandits beheaded, such as the famous Ametrano; and also that he had commanded the Jesuits, Certosans, and Olivetan friars to disburse funds for the king.5 It is highly likely that rumour was spreading that Masaniello had gone mad. According to the resident (Giraff i faithfully repeats his words), a brother-in-law of Masaniello went to the palace to bring the Count of Conversano “a safe-conduct for his [the count’s] person, goods, people, and house” and, while there, he said that Masaniello was going off his head, and that, “if he did not withdraw his hand from so many fires and deaths, he [the in-law] would cut his throat with his fist.”6 Amidst the assorted, murky reports of these events, it is sure that, after ten in the evening (not, as has been thought, by daylight), Masaniello went “for pleasure” off the Posillipo shore. The reasons for this excursion vary from one account to another, but doubtless some of those who went along had other goals than mere shared pleasure. Sauli and Giraffi diverge on this point. For Sauli, Masaniello, all upset, went to the palace and invited the viceroy to go to Posillipo. For Giraffi, it was the cardinal who suggested that he take the air awhile at Posillipo, hoping to distract him from “gloomy thoughts.” Some captains of the popolo had, indeed, gone to the cardinal, alarmed that Masaniello was bent on beheading members of their entourages. According to others, Masaniello went to the palace in the cardinal’s company, and was well treated with “a show of singular courtesy,” even though, says Donzelli, “the tissue of a most cruel death had already been woven.” According to the physician Donzelli, it was the viceroy who invited Masaniello to take the air at Posillipo, sailing by felucca. The excursion was cover for a trap, contrived to harm him further. 4 The dialogue, fruit of Giraffi’s imagination, is based on Sauli, Copia di lettera, p. 165. 5 Ibid., p. 373. “It was said that the Jesuits, Certosans, Benedictines and Olivetans offered him a great quantity of money. It is indeed true that he had a lot of it and he summoned many men of administrative authority over properties, asking them first if they were faithful to his king, and when they said yes, he made them sign a piece of paper that, they wager, is some sort of promise of a great sum of money.” The Genoese resident adds that Masaniello, as a sign of his devotion to the king of Spain, ordered that no one dress “in the French fashion,” but he was not obeyed. This passage reappears almost word for word in Giraffi, Le rivolutioni di Napoli, p. 167. 6 Giraffi, Le rivolutioni di Napoli, p. 167.

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At the viceregal palace, Masaniello did not refrain from insulting the visitatore generale: “Signor visitatore, I have been told you are a great crook, and that, to be precise, you have robbed a person, me that is, of six thousand ducats.”7 Sauli reports that Masaniello arrived alone and invited the viceroy to go with him to Posillipo, and that the viceroy declined the invitation, offering a felucca instead. So, Masaniello left with some sailors and eleven feluccas. The event was spectacular: from the Chiaia shore some 30,000 watched. Masaniello and his throng sailed, cheered by “the palace’s customary music.” The Capopopolo amused himself – so reports the resident of Genoa (implausibly, as night had fallen) – by tossing into the sea gold coins zecchini and doubloons, “and the sailors, to beguile him, dived in to grab them.”8 When he came back from Posillipo it was evident that he had swallowed “not a little lacrima Christi.” Here, the resident glides across a question then much disputed: Giraffi writes that, after Posillipo, Masaniello’s behaviour seemed strange, excessive, and violent and that therefore some thought that, before or during the felucca cruise, he had drunk spiked wine (“opiated,” wrote some). The chronicler admits to this story, but to refute it: If some curious person wants to investigate the cause of his madness, I might say that its sole cause was a drink that the viceroy had him given to this end, that was suited to distemper his brain, so that, acting like a madman and being so prickly as to earn the scorn of all the people, he would be killed when they plotted against him. This is the opinion of many. As to whether it is true or not, I leave that to others. But I think it most likely that his madness was the effect of long fasting, and continuing wakefulness, for he did not sleep and almost never ate, and also from the vastness of his thoughts, and the great machinery of business, things for which his small intellect, hitherto busied with the purchase and sale of small-fry fish, was not adequate. The joy to see himself then made, by the lowest populace, almost monarch of a city, a place like Naples, would have sufficed to turn the head of the world’s greatest knight and most sense-stuffed brain. All the more so with the vilest of fish-mongers, trash of the lowest plebe.9

As we see here, in Giraffi’s eyes, Masaniello had not been “poisoned.” Rather, he had gradually gone off his head, having become ambitious. Gabriele 7 Donzelli, Partenope liberata, p. 60. 8 Sauli, Copia di lettera, p. 374. 9 Giraffi, Le rivolutioni di Napoli, p. 176.

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Tontoli agrees with Giraff i, as do a few others.10 Other sources instead (Fuidoro, Donzelli and others) repeat the poison rumour without dismissing it. As Fuidoro wrote, “It was whispered, by persons in the know, that this madness was caused by the party at Posillipo.”11 And Donzelli speaks of a rumour that ran in certain circles. After this meal, it was observed that Tomaso Aniello was not functioning with healthy judgement, because he began to do many things like a person in a frenzied state: either it was because seeing himself equal to the viceroy altered his emotional state, or it was the overweening traffic, which, no less at night than in the daytime, he was having with the Popolo, and most often with little or no food, that brought him to such a lapse of mental force, just as, also, he had lost his voice. But speculative minds proposed another cause, a thing easily believed by those who hold it to be an infallible maxim that vendetta had chosen the Spaniards’ heart, viewing it as forever reliably cruel.12

Other observers take the poison as certain: besides Tutini and Verde, for whom Masaniello had already sniffed a bunch of flowers on which powder had been sprinkled, Piacente also affirms that the viceroy wanted to make him mad, to drive a wedge between him and the popolo.13 Chroniclers like Della Moneca and De Santis report the story and name names. It is clear that 10 Tontoli, Il Mas’Aniello, p. 95: for him, the “poison” that damaged Masaniello’s brain was “lack of sleep, not eating, loquacity, ambition, and over-work, to which one can add fear of death”; see also Capecelatro, Diario, p. 92 (a surfeit of wine); and Nicolai, Narrazione Giornale, p. 77, who says that it was the common folk who raised the matter of a poisonous drink. 11 Fuidoro, Successi historici, p. 66. 12 Donzelli, Partenope liberata, p. 61. 13 Tutini and Verde write that on Friday “a gentleman came from the palace, at the viceroy’s behest, and brought him a little branch of flowers, and he [Masaniello], taking them from him with a great bow kissed it and sniffed it several times and thanked his Excellency for the gift, and then he put it by a picture attached to a Madonna.” Tutini-Verde, Racconto della sollevatione, p. 63. Interestingly, even an author of the aristocratic party, a f irm loyalist like Piacente (indeed, in the brief preface to his chronicle, he tells how he returned to Naples with the Count of Oñate himself) asserts that Masaniello was “poisoned.” “When this noble party of knights and ladies dismounted, when the tables were all laid out, and the guests were welcomed with regal magnificence, Masaniello was well content, so that he responded to his Excellency’s favour without noticing the trap – that among the flowers of that banquet was hidden the poisonous snake set there to threaten his life. Common opinion holds that among the viands at that meal, or mixed in the wine, there was some sort of poison placed there at the hand of the duke, which, eaten or drunk, after an interval took away the use of intellect, as did turn out from the effect that appeared from it.” Piacente, Le rivoluzioni del Regno, p. 58.

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the chatter about that trip made associations and thought up disquieting scenarios whereby Masaniello had fallen prey to some of those around him. Della Moneca writes that Onofrio Cafiero (who led the troops against the Germans) gave him a drink, at the viceroy’s behest.14 De Santis likewise speaks of Cafiero: he had heard that Cafiero had proffered marzipan and water, and that Masaniello, after drinking a little of it, had felt a burning in his throat and dived into the sea. So, he adds, “a personage of singular integrity recounted that he was present when Don Girolamo d’Almeyda, the viceroy’s secretary, asked the gondoliers, his servants, ‘What is he doing? What is Masaniello doing?’ and that, when he had been told everything, he let slip from his mouth, speaking with a wink, ‘Let him do it! Let him do it!’”15 De Santis’s narrative is dedicated to Juan de Austria, natural son of Philip IV, whom many saw as a prince who could bring peace and security to the city and the kingdom. It was published in 1651, a cooler time than when Tontoli wrote (he finished his work in August 1647)16 or Giraffi (who wrote in September that same year). In the early months, when the “war” was still afoot, it seemed better to deny the rumour firmly, as it undermined a number of authorities. The Reverend Pollio, who left his work in manuscript, writes that among the party off the Posillipo coast were the brothers Catania and Ardizzone, and some of those who, since Wednesday (says Della Moneca), had wished to kill Masaniello, as was Giovanni Maiello, a physician active in the market and perhaps the author of the poison.17 14 I report what appears on the margin, though it is crossed out twice over in anticiption of printing or of another manuscript version: “He went for pleasure to Posillipo, where they put on a sumptuous meal. At this dinner was Honofrio Cafiero, his confederate. He gave him a drink to make him hateful to the people, and he did this with the consent of the Lord Viceroy, with fat promises to Cafiero”: Della Moneca, Istoria delle revoluzioni, f. 58v. 15 De Santis, Historia del tumulto, p. 137. De Almeyda’s name surfaces in the papers of the city’s banks as well as in the chronicles. See Notizie tratte dai giornali copiapolizze, p. 28. 16 At the end of his notice to the reader, Tontoli, on p. vi, writes his end date: “E termino questi Discorsi oggi 15 di Agosto 1647.” 17 Pollio, Historia del Regno di Napoli, f. 240r. Maiello’s name appears in the work by Del Bagno, Legum doctores, p. 356, among those dottori who took degrees at Naples (for 1630). In Buraña’s Batalla peregrina, the lady with whom the historian is in dialogue explains that she heard that a physician, whom she calls “Juan Majello Ursino,” had prepared a drink for Masaniello; the historian refutes her, saying this was a rumour among the lazzari: Juan Baptista Buraña, Batalla peregrina entre amor y fidelidad (Mantua: Carpentana, 1651), p. 159. The name of the physician also appears in the letter to the reader in James Howell, Parthenopoeia, or the History of the Most Noble and Renowed Kingdom of Naples with the dominions therunto annexed and the lives of all their kings (London: H. Moseley, 1654). Note that Doctor Maiello became protomedico of Naples with the help of his brother, Father Maestro Aniello, “Provinciale in S. Agostino”: Giuseppe

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Before we try to unsnarl this question’s threads, it is important to consider that, while Masaniello was at Posillipo, his wife, his mother, his sister and her child, and other Lavinaio women, his kinsfolk, went to the palace to call on the viceroy’s wife. Some say that they went there of their own accord, and others, to my mind more convincing, claim that they had been invited by the viceroy and even fetched and carried in a sumptuous carriage. Capecelatro and Sauli seem to have seen or learned much about that visit, one of the more unaccustomed and exceptional events, especially for that century, to happen on those days. Berardina and the viceregina kissed on the mouth as if equals. They were then received by other ladies, and by ministers. Berardina addressed the viceroy’s wife, “‘Your Excellency is the Vice-Queen of the Spaniards, and I am that of the Popolo.’ All the women had many welcomes and gifts, with a most beautiful necklace, and jewels.”18 The Visitatore Generale took into his arms the little son of Masaniello’s sister, kissing him over and over.19 Clearly, the viceroy and his wife wanted to give the impression that they were well inclined towards the people’s leaders. Responsibility for Masaniello’s imminent end should not fall on them. As for Genoino, where he was that day is unclear. Capecelatro writes that Masaniello’s rapport with Genoino had already cracked. The Duke of Arcos had made Genoino presidente of the Camera to render him odious to the popolo and to Masaniello, “who had a different goal than he had” and who had mistreated Genoino, as he had the Eletto del Popolo.20 Cavaliere Capecelatro writes that, off the Posillipo shore that Sunday, there were also those who wished to end Masaniello’s life: the brothers Catania and Ardizzone.21 Naturally, what happened before or during the Posillipo excursion is hard to say. The most famous detailed account of those days, by Schipa, rejects the hypothesis that Masaniello ate or drank anything that dulled his senses.22 The biographies range from a position like Schipa’s, Campanile, Libro Primo Quale contiene le cose degne di memoria accadute nella città di Napoli nel tempo delle sollevazioni popolari degl’anni 1647 e 1648. Di G. C., Giureconsulto Napoletano, Napoli, SNSP XXVI D 5, p. 181. Not by chance, this name appears among the traitors to the Popolo (among them Eletto Arpaia, Palumbo, and Politi, protagonists of the first phase of the revolt) in a pamphlet written at the beginning of September, commented on in Francesco Benigno, “¿Revuelta de Masaniello o revolución de Nápoles? Una reinterpretación,” Estudis: Revista de Historia Moderna, 46 (2020): 35–58, p. 54. 18 Capecelatro, Diario, p. 86. 19 Sauli, Copia di lettera, p. 374. 20 Capecelatro, Diario, p. 87. 21 Ibid., p. 89. 22 Schipa, “La così detta rivoluzione di Masaniello,” in Schipa, Studi masanielliani, p. 418. Here, the historian argues that the rumour about the drink was groundless. To his mind, Masaniello

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arguing that Masaniello became ever madder (Campolieti’s account also runs this way) to the opposite position (that of Antonio Romano, another Masaniello biographer), who not only insists that he was poisoned, but also names the plant that could be administered for the purpose.23 Certainly, poisons were then widely used to weaken or eliminate political rivals; in this case, the clues that support this hypothesis are many, and mutually independent. Two further important elements strengthen the poison thesis: first, that many spoke of a poisoned or somehow doctored drink. Besides the recorded attestations, we can note a passage in Pollio’s chronicle, where it appears that many thought Masaniello more than drunk: When Thommaso Anello came back from Posillipo with those good companions we told of, he went off his head and spoke like a madman and carried on like Bacchus. He had himself carried with the said felucca to Santa Caterina del Carmine having left his companions behind, and when he arrived at the shore where he was awaited by his usual following, the poor fellow, out of his senses, instead of debarking from the boat, threw himself into the sea with all his clothes on. And the lads standing around, who shortly before with their canes had been the soldiers of Tommaso Anello, thought that he was joking as he used to. They pounced on him, and Tommaso Anello, when he broke free of the scrum, put his hand to his sword and began to chase his famous soldiers. Entering some of the taverns of the market with his sword unsheathed, all drenched, he changed his behaviour. He was in view of all, and the said Tommaso Anello made a bad impression. Some said that he had been joined with Bacchus, others that the drink at the palace had been harmful, others that his companions at Posillipo had done him harm with the consent of His Excellency, and were contented that they had been paid off. Otherwise, had it not been the lord Viceroy’s wish, they would not have been justified. The said Tommaso Aniello seemed possessed by demons, so great were the pains in his body on account of the drink he had consumed that he had no rest day or night, so that many persons of good judgement were forced to take the said Tommaso Anello, and with kindly words they led indicated signs of madness before Sunday. Schipa’s reading has been shared by all the historians, from Galasso, Il Regno di Napoli, p. 320, who does not rule out a drama staged by Masaniello, to Villari (Un sogno di libertà, p. 341), who reads the madness as “insubordination.” 23 Giuseppe Campolieti, Masaniello. Trionfo e caduta del celebre Capopopolo nello sfondo della tumultuosa Napoli del Seicento (Milan: De Agostini, 1989), p. 148; very few venture to say what the drink that poisoned Masaniello might have contained. See Antonio Romano, Memorie di Tommaso Aniello d’Amalfi detto Masaniello. Responsabilità della Chiesa nella sconfitta della rivolta napoletana d’indipendenza antispagnola 1647–’48 (Rome: Scipioni, 1990), p. 232.

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him upstairs in his house. All told, those who led him had in their eyes more tears than comfort.24

Another interesting clue is that in the hours after Posillipo, when Masaniello already showed signs of mental imbalance, a group of eighteen to twenty gentlemen on horseback rode around the town, saying that Masaniello had gone mad and that one must yield to His Excellency. Many men went riding through the city announcing that it was necessary to offer obedience to the viceroy as vicar of the king, as Masaniello had lost his mind, and moreover that the Capitoli had been drawn up and that the viceroy had commanded Genoino to furnish the things necessary to the city. They were a number of noblemen on horseback, around eighteen or twenty, and they argued for obedience to the viceroy with light persuasive chatter.25

That the viceroy had every interest in making people speak of Masaniello in such terms is beyond doubt. The rumour that Masaniello had gone mad spread far and wide; in one account we read, “in throngs they ran to the market to see this mutation in one who not long before, with much intelligence and judgment, had disposed the affairs of the city.” The madman did not disappoint expectations: “With a knife that he held in hand he stabbed at whoever came before him, and he wounded many, both secular and religious, who had the misfortune to cross his path. And as much as earlier he had been loved and obeyed, so now they cursed him and he became hated by the people.” One reads, among other things, that he threw himself into the sea dressed in a suit of cloth of gold, one of those that had been given him. “From there, he was caught and led to his house, and he kept on doing crazy things.”26 On Monday, Masaniello’s madness became clear to all. The chroniclers report a variety of anecdotes, some of them hard to assay. Capecelatro recounts that on Monday morning, Masaniello went to the Maddaloni alla Stella palace and then returned to the Mercato. He put on a suit of the duke himself, embroidered in silk and silver, with a gold necklace, and a diamond gem, also the duke’s. And falling into 24 Pollio, Historia del Regno di Napoli, f. 40r. 25 Fuidoro, Successi historici, p. 67. 26 Tutini-Verde, Racconto della sollevatione, p. 74.

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a sudden frenzy, if it was not the impact of too much wine that he had drunk, he fired off the pistols that he was carrying on the horse’s saddle and began to say in a loud voice that nobody should show his face at the window, as he would kill him. And he drove the horse into the nearby sea, where the viceroy’s gondola still was […] and he climbed on, and, taking off his clothes, he threw himself into the sea and swam.27 Today – says Mayorica’s chronicle, for Monday – they began to hear about Masaniello’s follies, caused (as said many) by some mouthfuls taken yesterday when he dined at Posillipo with His Excellency. Others attributed it to natural causes, to the great lack of sleep, to the overwhelming labours, to the ceaseless thinking and much talk and to the fear he had of death and to the many discomforts he underwent by going continually around the market in the great heat. His mad doings were many and I will write down the ones I have heard about. Today, two very handsome companies of horsemen came to Naples. Masaniello went to meet them at the Ponte de la Maddalena [at the city’s eastern edge], and, when one of them who was a good friend of his called out to him he went over and talking face to face he pulled his hair really hard and would not let go. Then he chased him, knife in hand, with intent to wound, but was restrained by the others. When the cardinal’s theologian told him, speaking courteously, that, now that the city had satisfied its wish to have the gabella lifted, and was once more at peace, they should put the artillery back in San Lorenzo, he answered in a rage, “O infamous traitor of the people, are you proposing this to me?” And he gave orders to cut off his head. But, with the help of some members of the people, his friends, he [the theologian] removed himself from his presence. When a priest went by wearing a cape, he made them give him three hoists on the rope. When a poor box-maker who came to see him was asked by him what he had come to do. He answered, “I came with intent to see Your Lordship, as I am so pleased by your fortunate successes.” He answered, “You are a spy.”28

Other anecdotes, some of them very touching, give the impression that Masaniello understood very well that there was a movement afoot to take his life and that those who still gave signs of reverence in his direction were meanwhile amusing themselves to prove to themselves that he had changed, 27 Capecelatro, Diario, p. 90. 28 Mayorica, I tumulti e revolutioni, 94r.

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that he was distraught and bereft of the self-confidence that had from the very start marked his speech and actions. Sauli reports: Up came an old captain, a courteous man, named Cesare Spano, of the tercio of Don Prospero Tuttavilla. He told him that it would be good to give orders that they assign to him the soldiers of his tercio, as had been done with the Germans, or the Walloons. He [Masaniello] answered that he should go and fetch them. The captain replied that without a written order from him, they would not hand them over. He lashed out at him and twice hit him in the face with a staff, in view of the whole Piazza d’Armi [the muster square at Castel Sant’Elmo], saying to him I am telling you to go get them.29

Many accounts state that, feeling threatened, he ordered all those who lived around his house to move out, saying that he wanted to build himself a palace, in a “Piazza del Popolo [an urbanist fancy. Naples had no such square].” Dozens and dozens of families were thus forced to leave home, and they cursed him.30 Those close to him tried in vain to calm him. Masaniello abused them too, in the sight of many. Crazy, gone crazy, was said and said again. A witness wrote of hearing the shout “Viva the king of Spain, may His Excellency govern, and death to the madman!”31 Those inclined to want Masaniello dead grew in number. Among them was Vanni Pannarella, who had suffered his affronts, but could make no move thanks to the many guards around Masaniello’s house. His brother, on the night of the fifteenth, slept in hiding “in a sedan chair of the Duke of Maddaloni” because Masaniello, “impaired in understanding,” had “driven him off many times.”32 And the madman felt alone. That night he went to eat at the Ponte della Maddalena. He was on a high rock, in small company. Word went around that he said, “Members of the people, this is my last supper. It is almost a presage of my imminent death.”33 This tale is not at all unlikely. To Masaniello, only one f igure in history could seem like him, Christ, who had passed through the same calvary. He, too, believed he was doing right and received evil. He, too, trusted and was betrayed. 29 Sauli, Copia di lettera, p. 375. 30 Donzelli, Partenope liberata, p. 61, and Capecelatro, Diario, p. 91. 31 Anon, Popolo mio, eccoti osservati li toi privilegi, p. iv. 32 Donzelli, Partenope liberata, p. 61. 33 Mayorica, I tumulti e revolutioni, f. 95v.

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That night, Masaniello could not sleep. Back at the market, he stood in the window of his house. Around him, lights were burning, and everything seemed gloomy. Next to him were two pictures found among Maddaloni’s possessions, one a portrait of the duke’s father Marzio and the other of Diomede himself. Masaniello had had the eyes gouged out. Diomede Maddaloni was still free; Masaniello now had to surrender. He had not managed to lay eyes on the man he always considered the dispatcher of the bandits, but at least he had had the satisfaction of mutilating his face on a painting that depicted him handsomely: the canvases seem to have been by the famous Jusepe de Ribera.34 So, before a public of curious, frightened men and women, Masaniello began to speak. He said that: He wanted to build a bridge from Naples to Spain. Then he came back to the window with a crucifix in his hands and four lit torches at his two sides, saying that he had been badly treated by the people, whom he had liberated from painful straits and who now wanted to stone him. He said that the Author [God] knew this, and that he could defend his claims, but he was turning to the crucifix for pardon. He wanted to bless the people, not five times for the Five Wounds [of Christ], nor seven times for the Seven Joys [a litany of the Virgin], but nine times, as he did for the Nine Mysteries, but he did not say what these Mysteries were.

Masaniello then once more cut the painted heads of Maddaloni and his father. He said that it was a presage of his death, that he did not care if he was to be killed the next day by the people, and he took it [the forecast] to be true. And said that he was so exhausted, as he had that day drunk a barrel of water. And other exaggerations about how he had set the price of bread, swearing on the crucifix, about how he had not eaten, seeking the people’s forgiveness, showing his shrunken flesh and his hollow belly. When he uncovered the parts of his body, he provoked laughter in the by-standers. He was taken from the window by Giovanni, his brother, who had guards posted.35 34 Anon, Storia di Masaniello, f. 36v. Ribera, a Spanish painter, arrived in Naples in 1616. He did, indeed, paint a portrait of the Duke of Maddaloni, which Masaniello’s followers extracted from his palace. See the recent, densely argued essay of Francesco Lofano, “‘Non haver mai retratto homo al mondo più al natural di questo’. Considerazioni su Ribera ritrattista e alcuni documenti inediti,” Napoli nobilissima, vol. III, I (Jan. –April, 2017): 27–38. 35 Campanile, Diario circa la sollevazione della Plebe di Napoli, f. 17v.

XI. Epilogue Abstract The viceroy convinces secretary Vitale to betray Masaniello, but soon has Vitale killed. Capopopolo, sensing danger, tries to flee. The city buzzes with talk of Masaniello and of his alarming condition. Genoino is terrified, as he learns that the plebeian chief would have his head. Many sources later claim that Genoino connived with the viceroy in the plan to have Masaniello killed. The representatives of the People convene, voting not for death but for withdrawal from obedience, as Masaniello is ‘ill’, but their resolution fails to scotch the lethal plan put in motion some days earlier by the viceroy and some around him. Masaniello’s panicky final speech, flight, and savage decapitation. Keywords: Genoino, Masaniello’s talk, decapitation, viceroy’s strategy, popular reaction

1.

The Death of Marco Vitale and Masaniello’s Attempted Flight

When he understood that. as was his wish, Masaniello would soon be killed, the viceroy had “the trenches re-made at the entry to the square at the palace, and at the door of the courtyard, and had some artillery pieces placed in the said piazza, and, with new barricades, he also closed the entrances of the streets that, from the districts of Santa Lucia and Mortelle, led to Pizzofalcone [these districts are north and east of Pizzofalcone, a high ground near the shore].”1 A little before Masaniello died, on the sixteenth, his secretary was killed. Marco Vitale had gone to Castelnuovo, invited by Masaniello himself. The viceroy kept him there, using guile, “having raised the drawbridge, so he could not leave.”2 Capecelatro, who was there, recounts how the young man, 1 Capecelatro, Diario, p. 90. 2 Ibid., p. 94.

D’Alessio, S. Masaniello. The Life and Afterlife of a Neapolitan Revolutionary Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2022 doi: 10.5117/9789463721455_ch11

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held in the castle, spoke with some knights, and how he praised the works of his friend, saying that he had done much good for the poor and had laid aside a million ducats for the king. Marco Vitale’s hours were numbered, as the knight well knew. The Duke of Arcos had raised the drawbridge because he wanted him hanged from the battlements, but then he changed his plan. So, Vitale stayed at the castle all night long. He was killed in the morning, shortly after leaving. He ran into a company of soldiers “armed for war,” who were digging a trench. Taken aback, he asked them arrogantly what they were up to, and, when he was told that they had orders from the Duke of Arcos to dig that trench, Vitale grew angry, certain that this was a move against Masaniello. The corporal swiftly stabbed him twice, and the others finished him off with gunshots. The body was dragged behind a horse and abandoned near a sewer. The nineteenth-century historian Fiordelisi, well-known author of Gl’incendii in Napoli ai tempi di Masaniello, in an article in La Lega del Bene (4 January 1896), “Alcuni espedienti del Vicerè di Napoli durante la rivolutione del 1647–’48,” advanced the hypothesis that, shortly before he died, Marco Vitale had betrayed Masaniello. The researcher found documents at the State Archive of Naples showing that the viceroy had transferred some promissory notes to dottore Vitale; Della Porta also writes of this episode.3 Indeed, a document from the archival series Cedole di Tesoreria, volume 480, shows that, on 15 July, the cashier of the bank of the Monte dei Poveri accredited notes worth more than 2000 ducats to Marco Vitale, “on the orders of His Excellency.” He died too soon to cash them in. 4 Another document also there, dated 17 July, shows that, with Vitale now dead, the viceroy gave orders to fetch the notes back from Vitale’s 3 Della Porta, Causa di stravaganze, f. 91r: “He gave him 2700 ducats, in a promissory note, to be paid out by the bank of the Monte de Poveri.” The viceroy then learned: “of his perverse intent, tacitly commanded the guards of the castle not to let him leave.” The next day, says Della Porta, Vitale was killed on the viceroy’s orders. 4 Fiordelisi, “Alcuni espedienti del Viceré di Napoli durante la rivolutione del 1647–’4 8 [unpublished documents],” La Lega del Bene, Napoli, 4 gennaio 1896, pp. 3 ff. The document reads: “On the 15th of the said month [July 1647], from the bank of the Monte dei Poveri two thousand seven hundred ducats [at the rate of] 4.11, credits on various cassieri and exactors of the 2-grana-per-rotolo tax, paid by them to Francesco Lubrano on the account of the money raised on their behalf in diverse accounts for the sake of the said gabella.” And then, written on the margin, an annotation: “From the account one deducts 75 ducats, at [the rate of] 4.11, as the person who went to withdraw them paid less, who was Marco Vitale, to whom, at the orders of His Excellency, the cashier processed the promissory note, and because he died, having been killed, he could not manage to have them paid out by the funds, an order was put through by virtue of a note from his Excellency of 20 August, 1647.”

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house. They were found in the purse of an old woman, perhaps his mother.5 Fiordelisi alleges that the viceroy had transferred those credits as betrayal’s prize. When, by the viceroy’s agents, who were working to damage Masaniello, there were made to him [Vitale] proposals to betray the people’s strongman, in his mind there must have flashed the idea of earning that capital, and perhaps after some conversations with the viceroy, the notes, worth two thousand and seven hundred ducats, were transferred to him, as a reward for who knows what betrayal!

This hypothesis does not seem groundless, but no chroniclers on the spot advance it, however quick they were to allege Vitale’s greed. Moreover, as we have seen, Capecelatro writes that Masaniello sent Vitale to the castle and that Vitale praised his friend’s deeds. So, the two old friends probably still got on well. But let us return to Masaniello. He knew for certain that his hours now were numbered. It is little known that on 15 July, while Vitale was at the castle, he tried to flee towards Ischia. It was, according to Capecelatro, an excellent idea. Masaniello sent five feluccas and forty musketeers to the island. They went to ask Giovanni Battaglino, who governed Ischia on behalf of the Marquis of Pescara, to second him the keys to the castle, residence of Andrea d’Avalos, Prince of Montesarchio. When Masaniello’s followers arrived, Battaglino answered that, on orders of the prince who governed Ischia in the king’s name, he could not give the keys even to the viceroy himself. Shortly thereafter came news of Masaniello’s death, and his followers were bombarded by cannon fire. Many died at sea.6 Meanwhile, in the city, there was much talk of Masaniello and of his condition. Genoino was terrified, as he was told “hour by hour” that Masaniello’s folk would have his head, and that “he should not believe that he [Genoino] 5 Ibid., p. 3: “17 Luglio 1647. En d[ich]ho dia dosmil seicentos y quaranta duc. de diversas polisas de la gabela de los 3 granos à rotulo que truxo el S.rio de Masaniello) advirtiendo que si bien las polisas importavan dos mil setecientos y quince d., despues de haver muerto el dho S.rio no se halleron en el taleguillo que extava exondito en casa de una vieja mas que los dhos d. 2640, haviendose contado el dinero en presenzia del Aud. Gl., que le truxo” [“On the said day, 2640 ducats in diverse notes on the gabella of two granas per rotulo that the secretary of Masaniello carried off, be it noted that if in fact the notes amounted to 2715 ducats, after the death of the said secretary, there were found in the little bag hidden in the house of an old woman only 2640, when the money was counted in the presence of the Uditore Generale, who fetched them.”] 6 Capecelatro, Diario, p. 91; Della Moneca, Istoria delle revoluzioni, f. 61v.

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had business with the Duke of Osuna.”7 The dottore was not the only one frightened. Many heads of the popular party, reassured by the viceroy, as he had conceded the privileges and sworn to respect them, met in the convent of Sant’Agostino, seat of the seggio of the People, to decide what to do about Masaniello. So, was Masaniello killed thanks to the wishes of those capi, too? Donzelli claims that Michelangelo Ardizzone was called to the palace on Sunday, “saying that since that time, he had had the order for it from the viceroy, with the assistance of Tonno d’Angelo, of the Eletto del Popolo, and of Genoino; to the contrary, this machine was already so well known that when Ardizzone left the Fosse [the public grain stores that he administered], it was said in public that then he was going to earn that fine reward for the head of Tomaso Anello.”8 So, for Donzelli, Genoino cooperated with the viceroy, who wanted Masaniello to die. Giraffi holds that both Genoino and Arpaia had been badly handled by Masaniello, probably because he understood that they had abandoned him: And while they were discussing the way, and the tricks by which best to bring their shared desire to its wished-for goal, who should show up at the castle but Genoino, and Arpaia, exclaiming that they, too, were against Capopopolo. The former was full of scornful wrath, not only because with Masaniello he could no longer get anything done, but, all the more, he found himself continually at risk of death, as Masaniello kept threatening to behead him, and saying that he should not believe he was doing business with the Duke of Osuna [viceroy in 1616–1620], and they say that Masaniello had struck him many times with a stick, and still he was forced, for fear of worse, to keep the offences hidden, and be silent. Arpaia, too, had his mortifications and dangers. He received a slap in public, and all were afraid, as they did not know how, and could not, at that time, take revenge, seeing that, hanging on his every nod, were more than one hundred and fifty thousand well-armed fighting men, even if they thought that the greater part, and more civilian of these were a contemptible lot, particularly since Sunday evening, and frightened by his tyrannical justice. So they decided, with the counsel of Genoino, that the two [Genoino and Arpaia] would go together, and with Arpaia the captains of the streets of the greater part of the city, and of the civil popolo they would go to the viceroy and tell him that they found Masaniello’s 7 Sauli, Copia di lettera, p. 376; Giraffi, Le rivolutioni di Napoli, p. 182, who here transcribes Sauli’s letter word for word. 8 Donzelli, Partenope liberata, p. 65.

Epilogue

183

behaviour odious and they did not want to obey him any longer, but that in everything, for everything, they would depend only on the signals from His Excellency, so long as they had been first assured by him of the infallible observance of the privileges and freedoms already conceded, and sworn to, to which His Excellency with promptitude agreed, and quickly declared confirmed by public decree. When they had that in hand, they resolved to gather on the same day in the convent of Sant’Agostino, but not all came for the great fear they had of Masaniello, whom they swiftly sent again to Posillipo with the gondola of the viceroy’s wife. And they also concluded with vows in writing from those not there, that they should put Masaniello in chains, and keep him under guard in a castle for the rest of his life, as they would rather not have him killed on account of the good works for their benefit that he had done earlier.9

A propos of the Sant’Agostino meeting, Donzelli writes: Towards the eleventh hour of day in the convent of Sant’Agostino all the captains of the ottine met with the Eletto del Popolo, and Genuino, and there they resolved no longer to obey Tomaso Anello. When they came out from there they said, “We have already decided what must be done,” and they went towards the palace, where they reported the decision to the viceroy, who a little later sent a gentleman of his, who went swiftly on horseback through all the city over to the market, saying, “Everyone obey the Signor Duke of Arcos, on pain of rebellion.”10

On this matter, the evidence of De Santis is very interesting: At the meeting, Genoino was of the opinion that one should not give the plebs a new occasion to rise in fury, as their spirits might be horrified if someone were to bathe his hands in the blood of a common benefactor. That, while the news of his frenzy was already spreading, it might be wiser counsel to await awhile for the remedy to this evil, as Masaniello, continuing his outrages, might stir up against himself the hatred of all, and in such a case his death would end up pleasing everyone.11 9 Giraffi, Le rivolutioni di Napoli, pp. 182–183. Giraffi trascribes from Sauli, Copia di lettera, pp. 376–377: “Even Genoino himself could do nothing.” 10 Donzelli, Partenope liberata, pp. 63–64. 11 De Santis, Historia del tumulto, p. 108. De Santis believes that the Sant’Agostino meeting happened on Sunday.

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Others assert, instead, that the dottore had a crucial role in the decision to kill Masaniello – among those to say so were the author of the Storia di Masaniello, and Agostino Nicolai.12 It seems clear that Genoino, already president of the Camera della Sommaria, had at the least led the viceroy to believe that no one still felt kindly towards that madman. And certainly, many chronicles speak of general hatred towards Masaniello. His decision to uproot the families dwelling near his house, as we have said, provoked grudges and rancour.13 While many now felt sharp hostility towards him, still this meeting of the piazza of the People did not vote for his death. What was in fact said at Sant’Agostino is told in greater detail by the Reverend Pollio, who was present: Their interests were varied and everyone judged as he saw fit […]. The first proposal was that T[ommaso] be placed in somebody else’s house, and well cared for, and taken care of for some days until one could see the outcome of his infirmity, but not take away his authority, but only suspend it under the Eletto del Popolo, because, with rest, perhaps he could return to health. Others thought of pleasing His Excellency. They said, “Let us make him die, and let’s return to the peace as before, because this Tommaso Aniello might perhaps be cured, and return to his wits, and we would be forced to give him authority again, and, on account of his 12 “When some captains were called to Sant’Agostino, it was concluded that the rule of Masaniello was pernicious and for that reason he was no longer recognized as Capitan Generale, and then when word of it was given to the Signor viceroy, Genoino received from His Excellency the order to take the command from him with Masaniello’s death”: Anonymous, Storia di Masaniello, f. 41v; Nicolai, Narrazione Giornale, p. 83. According to Nicolai, along with the viceroy, the dottore stirred up popular hatred for Masaniello, pushed for a drastic remedy and gathered the assent of all: this is a report not shared in all respects by others cited there. 13 Della Moneca, Istoria delle revoluzioni, f. 60r, saying that everybody hated Masaniello on account of his order about the adjoining houses at the market. Frate Mayorica is close to Della Moneca: he writes that, since Masaniello decreed two hours after sundown that everybody had to move out, he became so disliked that some women burst into tears praying Saint Anthony to liberate them from such a “dog.” While Masaniello was eating alone, the viceroy summoned Genoino and they decided to kill him. “The Eletto gave his assent, as did many other heads of the people, who had been mistreated by Masaniello” (Mayorica, Istoria delle revoluzioni, f. 95v); Fuidoro, Successi historici, pp. 66 ff., glosses over the responsibilty of the people in Masaniello’s murder; the Casanatense Anonymous is meagerly detailed, but quick to criticize Genoino (Narrazione della rivolta, f. 192v). The anonymous author of the Vita, however, tries to spare Genoino and to give the impression that it was the people who wanted Masaniello dead (Vita di Masaniello cioè sue fortune, f. 223v). According to him, and to Giraffi as well, Genoino was betraying neither the viceroy nor the people. Clearly, opinions varied, but, in general, few had kind things to say about the actions of the dottore, then or later.

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recent deposition, the said Tommaso Aniello would have his mind dead set against us and His Excellency, and in this fashion the whole thing would go on to infinity.” Others said that some other person should be chosen to govern and that Tommaso Aniello should be given a position for so much a month so that he could live in comfort, given that he had been cured of his infirmity, and another way to handle the conclusion of that position was that they were to hold his authority suspended and to keep an eye on the nature of his illness, described above. When the formal decree on the matter had been made, Parmisciano the secretary came out of that house of the seggio and he read in the presence of all the people the removal from office of Tommaso Aniello, and all were of agreement with the idea, and that for the interim the Eletto Francesco Antonio Arpaia should govern. At the reading of the decree, I was present, and also Salvatore Catania, and others little friendly to Tommaso Aniello, as they had been affronted by him, like Altizzone, and others.14

There were thus discordant voices. One current wanted “to please the viceroy,” and make him die. Nevertheless, the opinion of the majority prevailed: leave Masaniello alive but remove the command (la persona). This is the meaning of “termination of the person of Tommaso Aniello.”15 Despite that decision, Salvatore Catania and Michelangelo Ardizzone rushed off to kill him.16 According to Pollio, they made haste to do the deed because they had money in their custody at home. Also, as bakers, they had been hit by the Capopopolo’s measures, which is why they, with others, went to kill him. They acted in the knowledge that the deed would be rewarded at the palace. More recent scholarship has reaffirmed that the viceroy 14 Pollio, Historia del Regno di Napoli, f. 41r. 15 Others, too, sought to depose Masaniello: “They decided to take governance away from him, and to surrender him into the hands of the viceroy. But, at the same time, while they were conferring, others outside were scheming to take his life.” (Anonymous, Relatione della sollevatione della città di Napoli per occasione della Gabella de frutti successo a di 7 di luglio nel presente anno 1647, f. 55v). But see also Tutini-Verde, Racconto della sollevatione, p. 75; Donzelli, Partenope liberata, p. 64; Piacente, Le rivoluzioni del Regno, p. 60, according to all of whom they decided at Sant’Agostino only to depose him. Mayorica, I tumulti e revolutioni, f. 95v, writes that the plebs joined with the viceroy and also with many honoured citizens: “this caused His Excellency to come to a decision. So he had Genoino summoned, and conferred with him about his idea of having Masaniello killed, and he [Genoino] advised him that he should die.” De Santis mentions an earlier meeting, where Genoino advised not killing Masaniello, but making him hated, as his death would enrage the people. De Santis, Historia del tumulto, p. 108. 16 Pollio, Historia del Regno di Napoli, f. 41r. The writer, in an account of the following days, explains that the reading of the decree was the work of the secretary of the seggio of the People, Giuseppe Parmigiano, and it was decreed that one should no longer obey Masaniello (f. 240v).

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played an “active part” in Masaniello’s death. It emerges clearly from various sources, one more reason why Schipa’s doubt is baffling.17 Masaniello was killed because the viceroy wanted him dead, and because, hour by hour, he had dextrously won over men around Masaniello, while the people, worn down by his “craziness,” receded ever more from their devotion. Donzelli, we have seen, speaks of a price on his head.18 Capecelatro tells how, on the afternoon when Masaniello was killed, he himself was with the viceroy. Hearing of Vitale’s death, many of the popular party had begun to “take up arms in service of the viceroy.” The viceroy went into the park behind the palace, “surrounded by a crowd of nobles that followed him.” There, he promised 10,000 ducats to whoever consigned him alive or dead, and then received word that Masaniello had been killed.19 Meanwhile, the Duke of Arcos had sent galleys to the shore off the Carmine just in case, after the expected event, the people rose. Capecelatro knew well why the viceroy made the move: “the viceroy sent Giannettino Doria, with the galleys of Naples, which he commanded, to the shore of the Conceria and of the Mercato, with the order to come as close as possible, with their bows to landward, so to have their cannons lined up to pound those places, if the popular party down there should make a hostile move.”20

2.

His Final Salute

Not long after the meeting, early in the afternoon, Masaniello fled his house, surrounded by guards, and went into the church of the Carmine where, that 17 Schipa wrote: “It is possible that rewards were distributed right away; for, however uncertain is an earlier participation by the viceroy, of whatever kind, in the plotted homicide, it is no less certain that he was pleased by the fait accompli.”: Schipa, La così detta rivoluzione di Masaniello in Idem, Studi masanielliani, p. 429. It is likely that Schipa was influenced by the thoughts of Vincenti: “Was Masaniello’s death desired by the viceroy? One cannot affirm it with absolute certainty; but, whether from the little one can learn from the historians, or, rather, from the writers of the time, or whether from the document that we are publishing, the viceroy and his followers showed great pleasure, and gratitude to the assassins of Masaniello.” (Vincenti, Gli uccisori di Masaniello, Naples: G.M. Priore, 1900), p. 15. More recent historical writing has rebutted these affirmations; Musi: “If we observe attentively the sequence of events, it is beyond doubt that the one who pulled the strings in the plot against Masaniello was the viceroy (Musi, La rivolta di Masaniello, p. 143); on the other figures behind his death see: D’Alessio, “La rivolta napoletana del 1647. Il ruolo delle autorità cittadine nella fine di Masaniello,” Pedralbes, 3 (2012): 127–156; Villari, Un sogno di libertà, pp. 340 ff. 18 Donzelli, Partenope liberata, p. 65. 19 Capecelatro, Diario, p. 97. 20 Ibid., p. 99.

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day, 16 July, they were celebrating the festa of the Virgin of the Carmine.21 He went up into the pulpit and spoke with great emotion, sure that at any moment his killers would arrive. He said that he was “the greatest sinner in the world, because he had blasphemed God and the Most Holy Virgin, and that they had done for him more graces than he deserved, giving him so great a command, but that he renounced it, and that he was only content that he had lifted the gabelle from his people, for whom he would always be ready to lose his life.” Then, he turned towards the friars and asked them to give him confession, perhaps accusing them of using their power only to “take eggs and hens and a few pennies [tornesi] from poor little women. Then he began to discourse on the Most Holy Trinity, saying about it a thousand distorted things and heresies.” And then he grabbed a crucifix and tried to cast himself down from the pulpit, but was stopped by fathers of the Carmine.22 “Heretical” notes emerge also in the speech as reported by Fra Mayorica. “My people, I tell you that you need not fear a thing, for I am here to defend you, because I am not afraid of Pope Innocent, whom I have beneath my feet, nor of the cardinal, nor of the viceroy.” The “Father Master” of the Carmine then tried to stop him, but Masaniello “gave him several times some punches in the chest that hurt.” He suddenly bared his chest, saying “‘this is the flesh of Christ […].’ While he was saying these things, a possessed person said loudly, ‘Oh Masaniello, very little of your life remains!’ Then he, frightened by these words, said, ‘Oh woe! Here there are plots and betrayal!’ and he went towards the church to rouse the people to defend him.”23 Others report that Masaniello said that he was holy, “and that for this reason he had not been wounded by the harquebus shots fired in that same church and unlacing his chest and his hose he showed all his flesh untouched by bullets.”24 The accounts of those moments must have travelled far and wide. Thus, Capecelatro, who was not at the church, could write from hearsay: 21 Donzelli, Partenope liberata, p. 64. 22 Masaniello managed to escape the guards around his house and go into the church (Sauli, Copia di lettera, p. 377); he “by good luck just escaped from the irons” (from surveillance): Giraffi, Le rivolutioni di Napoli, p. 186. The anonymous author of the Vita di Masaniello also speaks of a flight, on horseback. “He jumped down from the horse like a man who throws hmself on soft ropes, but, abandoning the horse he ran into the convent of the Holy Virgin.” (f. 219r); Della Moneca: “From his house, alone, barefoot, and dressed shabbily, running furiously, and went up the pulpit of that church”: Istoria delle revoluzioni, f. 62v. 23 Sauli, Copia di lettera, p. 378; Giraffi, Le rivolutioni di Napoli, pp. 186–187. 24 Mayorica, I tumulti e revolutioni, f. 96v. Some explain Masaniello’s stripping off his garments as his desire to show the people “how he had lost weight and was worn down by having laboured in their service”; according to others, he said “that the guns fired at him had not harmed him, and he

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And wanting to show the people his belly and his back, some say, to have them see how he had grown thin by working in their service, and that the volleys fired at him had done no harm, and having thrown off his stockings, he raised his shirt in front and when he wanted to do the same from the back side, a Carmelite friar, seeing that he was acting like a madman, in a way ill-suited to the reverence owed the sacred place where he was, climbing to the pulpit embraced him and made him come down, as the cardinal had already left, having celebrated the mass.25

According to Giraffi, at that moment, Masaniello showed the cardinal a letter where he said he desired to set up a cavalcade with him and with the viceroy. That way, if he had to die, “he died content.” In the letter, he indeed invited the viceroy to take part. The cardinal then embraced him and sent the letter to the palace. So writes Giraffi, but his reconstruction is far from plausible. We have read already that Masaniello expressed himself freely even in Filomarino’s presence, having learned, if little else, that the cardinal was doing little to save him: “My people, I tell you that you need not fear a thing, for I am here to defend you, because I am not afraid of Pope Innocent, whom I have beneath my feet, nor of the cardinal, nor of the viceroy.” According to many chroniclers, Masaniello also said he knew his death was now very near. In his final speech from the pulpit of the Carmine, he recounted how he had dreamed of the eruption of Vesuvius. “My people, I am dead. I have seen that even Monte Somma [one peak of Vesuvius] is against me, for it has vomited over me a flood of fire. I tell you for certain that very soon I will be killed.” This suggests that Masaniello was still very impressed by the 1631 eruption of Vesuvius.26 The killers’ company was fairly big. took off his leggings and raised his shirt from his front.”: Capecelatro, Diario, p. 95. He said “many crazy words, that made no sense, like a true madman, and he was holding a Christ in his hand, and while he was doing this he was taken in hand by two Fathers, and they took him up to the cloister.”: Simonetta, Historia delle rivoluzioni di Napoli, f. 98r; “He began to preach to the people saying many bad things, and unseemly words, showed his naked flesh saying ‘this is the flesh of Christ’ and laid hands on the cross of the pulpit, and pried free of its nails the crucifix there, and brought it to the people, and one could see clearly that he was crazy.”: Della Moneca, Istoria delle revoluzioni, f. 62v. Among other things, Masaniello said that he wanted to build a bridge to join Spain to Naples, and he wanted the relics of Sant’Aniello to be recovered, a thing that was, in fact, later done. 25 Capecelatro, Diario, p. 95. 26 Anonymous, Storia di Masaniello, f. 39v. The author depicts himself as an eyewitness: “The people was so baffled that, indeed, I was present at these [recounted] visions, and I became confused by this hyperbole.”; Tontoli also reports that Masaniello said that he had dreamed of Vesuvius, which “was vomiting fire” on his head: Tontoli, Il Mas’Aniello, p. 139.

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Michelangelo Ardizzone, Salvatore and Carlo Catania, the corporal Giuseppe Langobardo, kinsman of Angelo, Don Pietro Morales, Giovanni Battista Buonomo, Giuseppe Lista, abbot Micone Calisto, Aniello de Ferrante an underling of Ardizzone, Andrea Cocozza, Masillo de Caro, Giuseppe Greco and Pietro Cocitore, having come to an agreement with Andrea Rama, captain of the company posted outside Porta Reale (where they were with dottore Giovan Battista Ardizzone, cousin of Angelo [i.e. Michelangelo].

Hearing that Masaniello had gone into the friars’ dormitory, they tried to get to him, but they were forced to do violence to a friar who was guarding the door leading upstairs, who refused to let them enter. And, when they got to the dormitory, not seeing Masaniello, they asked the monks where he was, and when they refused to reveal where he was, they began to beat them. And, at the shouting, Maso Anello came out of the cell where he was staying, either believing that they were his followers or because he wanted to help the friars. And, shouting, “Ah, cur!” as he came out they fired five harquebus shots, one of which, hitting him squarely, knocked him to the ground, and, putting his hand before his face, he died.27

According to Sauli, Masaniello had shut himself in a room. Others write that he was hit while walking in a frenzy, or running, and yet others say that he had just gone to a window and seen the galleys when the assassins caught up with him.28 Once he had been shot, the killers cut off his head, 27 Della Porta, Causa di stravaganze, f. 95v. 28 Capecelatro, Diario, pp. 95–96. Those dramatic moments are well described by the Casanatense Anonymous, Narrazione della rivolta, f. 70r, who writes that Masaniello said “dirty words” against the monks of the convent, and perhaps against the cardinal himself, who does not turn out to have opposed the killers; Mayorica writes of friars who fought to save his life: “because the Fathers, fearing a revolution, had had them [the doors] locked, and when they were not opened for them [the killers], they said with high feeling that they had been sent by his Excellency, and, as the friars could not resist them, they opened them and let a goodly part of them come in.” Mayorica, I tumulti e revolutioni, f. 96v. The other versions of these moments are even more tragic, unlike Giraffi’s, which is rather wary. In Giraffi’s account, Masaniello, resigned and clueless, like a sacrificial lamb, asks his killers, “Are you looking for me?” “Here I am, my people.” He is then struck by gunshots by Salvatore and Carlo Catania, Michelangelo Ardizzone, and Andrea Rama. This version laid a thick blanket over the responsibility of the viceroy and of the civic authorities (Giraffi, Le rivolutioni di Napoli, p. 186). It is more likely that Masaniello was struck while walking alone and “frenzied” (Della Moneca) or while running (Tutini-Verde) or having just hidden behind a trunk (Piacente). Frate Mayorica had gone to a

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not easily it seems, as the knife was dull.29 In the Carmine, when the shots rang out, everyone tried to flee through the doors, some even wounding those in their way. A witness reported, “if I had fallen I easily could have died on the spot, such was the crush of people where I was, so I also fled in a hurry with others, and until I reached home I never felt safe.” “Some broke a leg, some an arm, some the head, and in particular in that church there was a pregnant women and, on account of the great noise and fear there, everyone said that she was dead, and everyone said so out loud.”30 The killers left the Carmine in haste, with their weapons pointed at the people and the head of Masaniello thrust inside a hat so as not to stir up panic, and went by coach to the palace.31 The viceroy must then have paid what he owed, even though he was in dire straits. On 2 August, via a third party who spoke Spanish, Carlo Catania asked the viceroy to give him the payment due him for having killed Masaniello, as he had lost all his possessions in the popular reaction that ensued. That same day, the Camera della Sommaria, where Genoino was president, issued a payment of 200 ducats.32 Some years ago, some documents emerged from a trial of 1682, held to validate the claim of Aniello di Ferrante and Tommaso de Caro to be counted among Masaniello’s killers, so as to receive the same reward given to others. Di Ferrante and de Caro won their pay-off.33 convent window and, he writes, espied the galleys, and, understanding why they were there, turned back to call the people to defend him (Mayorica, I tumulti e revolutioni, f. 97v). 29 After the harquebus shots, Catania cut off his head, “causing great pain and suffering to Masaniello” (Mayorica, I tumulti e revolutioni, f. 97v). Mention of a painful death appears also in the anonymous Vita di Masaniello: “a nasty knife, a palm in length, the kind that closes on the handle, and took him by the hair and cruelly sawed at his neck, and as the knife was not sharp, they gave him a death as pitiable as could be, for Masaniello did nothing but cry out, for the space of half a quarter of an hour.” (f. 219v). 30 Anonymous, Giornale Istorico de Tumulti populari e de di loro eventi accaduti, e delle pene de delinguenti da luglio 1647 per li 16 gennaio 1652, SNSP, XXVI B 14, f. 20v. 31 Salvatore Catania appeared, with “in one hand, that (head), in the other a bloody knife.” Pollio says that he seemed “more a tyrant than a man.” (Pollio, Historia del Regno di Napoli, f. 41r). 32 The f irst document is at ASN, Segreterie dei Viceré, 128, f. 145. It ends as follows: “Dios guarde la Catolica Real persona de V. Mgd, como la Christianidad ha menester [God preserve the Royal Catholic person of Your Majesty, as Christianity requires], Napoli, 2 de Agosto 1647.” The second is at ASN, Regia Camera Sommaria, Viglietti originali, vol. 16, and it has the same date. It orders the payment of “two hundred scudi to Carlo Cataneo, one of the persons who will kill Masaniello.” 33 In particular, these papers gave: “privilegios de Nobleza” and “25 scudi” per month to each (Vincenti, Gli uccisori, p. 60).

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191

But let us return to the Carmine. Some children grabbed Masaniello’s body and began to drag it through the city.34 In Pollio’s chronicle, we read a very detailed account of the varied reactions of the plebs. When they did that, many grieved and cried to see such a spectacle, to kill an innocent madman against the people’s will; others, like enemies of the truth, rejoiced at such a death because he had allowed their houses to be burned; others said this death was done with the consent of His Excellency, to restore power to the palace and to the Royal Collateral, and to not have it given into the hand of another because he who is accustomed to command can do no less, and they feared that Tomaso Aniello would return to his senses and that they would be forced, after so many concessions by His Excellency, to return him [Masaniello] to his off ice, and so it was understood that it must have been an operation carried off by the prince and his Collateral [Council].35

The plebs did not drunkenly celebrate Masaniello’s death, nor did they rise up. Capecelatro remarks: But nobody made a move. Rather, everyone remained as if intimidated by Maso Anello’s death. So, for certain, had the duke sent to the Mercato a reasonable number of soldiers, he would, without hinderance, have had in hand the convent and the bulwark of the Carmine, and fortified it with good ease, taking from the people those places that were the principal fortress of their defence.36 34 Giraffi, Le rivolutioni di Napoli, p. 189; Donzelli, Partenope liberata, p. 65; the testimony of the notary Montanario is very interesting: “after the midday meal thirty boys dragged the body of Tomas Aniello through the whole city, all the while some slaves of Don Ferrante Caracciolo were giving it more wounds. And they took it to where the head was, but, always throwing stones at it, the boys threw it into a filthy, stinking ditch and covered it with stones.” (In questo libro vi sono notate tutte le cose, f. 10r). One voice declaring the plebs’ ingratitude was that of Agostino Nicolai: “But some noisy spirits among the plebs, already alienated from him, and backing the attack of the plotters, shouted in unison, ‘death to the tyrant Masaniello’.” (Nicolai, Narrazione Giornale, p. 88). But Nicolai was writing at a time when many stressed the betrayal by the plebs, sometimes neglecting sources to the contrary. That view already surfaced in the account by Emmanuele Palermo, who, viewing 1647 through the lens of 1799, portrayed the plebs as “drunken and debauched” after the death of the Capopopolo (Palermo, La rivoluzione di Napoli dell’anno 1647, f. 131v). 35 Pollio, Historia del Regno di Napoli, f. 42v. 36 Capecelatro, Diario, p. 99.

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It is necessary, however, to underline the “madness effect” in a double sense, a propos of public discussion of the madness and of Masaniello’s aggressive acts: “the people made no move because it was greatly exasperated by the insolences caused by Masaniello’s madness, and it blessed God for having remedied so many inconveniences.”37 After going to the palace, the killers carried Masaniello’s head on a spear, “through the most famous quarters of the city” and then put it near the granaries of the comune, where Michelangelo Ardizzone was. The body was in the end abandoned in the Borgo delli Vergini, with a rope tied to its feet.38 Painters came rushing, aware that there would soon be great demand for portraits of the man who in a few short days had become king of Naples. With good reason: “Everyone went looking for it. Everyone wanted one, without regard for price.”39

3.

“‘Make way, make way, for the Signora Duchess of the Sardines!’”

Salvatore Catania then went to the market to fetch Berardina and took her to the viceroy: “he took her imprisoned by his hand, mistreating her with slaps, and dragging her in the street with his glove in the bosom of that slut with all her breasts showing, and he took her to His Excellency, and she was kept there because that lord knew some important thing, I know not what.”40 Seeing her go by, many derided her, showing their resentment for the great lady airs she had affected lately; the viceroy’s strategy of separating the people from their capo had certainly succeeded. They dealt her “a thousand insults, attacking her clothing, everyone tearing her garments, and the lucky ones grabbed a piece of them, to ridicule her, saying, ‘Look at the relics of 37 Tutini-Verde, Racconto della sollevatione, p. 76. So, too, say others: “They made no fuss about it, so indignant were they for the many cruelties done by Masaniello.” (Della Porta, Causa di stravaganze, f. 97v). 38 Capecelatro, Diario, pp. 97–98; Fuidoro, Successi historici, p. 67; Giraff i, Le rivolutioni di Napoli, p. 198, writes that the corpse was abandoned between Porta Nolana and Porta Capuana; Tutini-Verde, Racconto della sollevatione, p. 76, notes that: “it was abandoned in a ditch not far from the bake-oven of the said Catanias.” 39 De Santis, Historia del tumulto, p. 151. 40 Pollio, Historia del Regno di Napoli, f. 42v. For the viceroy’s attempt to recover his goods from Berardina, see Mayorica, I tumulti e revolutioni, f. 98r.

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the Signora duchess!’”41 They shouted at her, “‘Make way, make way, for the Signora Duchess of Sardines’.”42 A similar fate befell the mother and the sister: arriving at the palace, “they threw themselves at the feet of the viceroy with exclamations that one would expect from minds fallen from the sublime height, and happiness, into the deepest pit of misery.”43 According to Capecealatro, they were led “opprobriously” into the prison at Castelnuovo and then entrusted to Genoino who, in the end, forced them into a convent.44 Berardina, however, was later seen in a brothel, no longer a prostitute among her husband’s friends, but “in charge of everybody,” many of whom wanted carnal knowledge of the woman who once had wed the lowly fishmonger who became the city’s quasi-monarch. The Reverend Pollio saw her in her new condition: she had become “a public prostitute at the orders of all, seen by me at the brothel to the marvel and scandal of the contemplative.”45 The brother and brother-in-law were also imprisoned in Castelnuovo. 46 The viceroy granted an indult, a pardon, but excluded any who might avenge Tommaso Aniello: It having come to our notice that in this most faithful city they are imprisoning diverse persons on account of the tumult that has taken place there by Tomaso Anello d’Amalfi, and because our intention is not only that one observe the indult made, but also to expand it, as with this [decree] we expand it, even for crimes committed down to the publication of this decree, therefore we see fit to order all the captains of justice, of the campagna, the bargelli [chief constables] and whatsoever other persons, of whatsoever grade and condition they may be, that under pain of natural death they dare not imprison any person, with however the exception of

41 Anonymous, Distinto Ragguaglio della sollevazione, overo Revolutione seguita nella Città di Napoli li 7 Luglio 1647, Vat. Lat. 11736 (Misc. Arm. III 64), ff. 3r–45v: f. 44v. 42 Sauli, Copia di lettera, p. 378. 43 Donzelli, Partenope liberata, p. 65. 44 These women were well treated at the cardinal’s intercession, according to Donzelli’s detailed account (Ibid, p. 66). 45 Pollio, Historia del Regno di Napoli, f. 48r. Fuidoro also reports on the eventual prostitution of Masaniello’s mother and sister: “From there they were consigned by Genoino, with a supply of food, f irst in a monastic residence and then in their own house, and f inally they became prostitutes.” Fuidoro, Nota a Campanile, Diario circa la sollevazione della Plebe di Napoli, f. 18v. 46 Capecelatro, Diario, p. 98. The Casanatense Anonymous (Narrazione della rivolta, c. 73r) lets us learn a detail hitherto overlooked: Taverella wanted to kill Masaniello’s brother and brother-in-law, but they took refuge in the Carmine and the friars protected them.

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the brother and brother-in-law of the said Tomaso Anello, and the other prisoners brought by the most faithful people. 47

Shortly, the viceroy had to change course. With a new decree he commanded: No person should be imprisoned on account of the said tumult except the brother and brother-in-law of the said Tomaso Aniello. Afterwards, by the magnificent Eletto del Popolo of this most faithful city we have been supplicated to pardon the brother of the said Tomaso Anello. And as we desired to do a thing pleasing to the said most faithful people, with the present decree we pardon the brother of the same Tomaso Anello and we wish him to enjoy the said indult for the crimes committed by him in the same fashion as is conceded to the other persons who took part in the said tumult. 48

And so, Giovanni came out of the castle but was once again captured, shut away, and, in the end, either poisoned or strangled in Castelnuovo. He would die on 16 September. 49 In the hours after Masaniello’s death, the cardinal and the viceroy went down into the city on horseback with some knights. At the cathedral, having visited the chapter of the glorious San Gennaro, and of other saint protectors of the city, the cardinal remaining the duke went to the market, by way of the street of the Conceria, where all the people were armed in various companies. They struck their flags and received him with happy applause, saying, “Viva the king and the Duke of Arcos!” and when he told them that he was confirming all the capitoli and privileges conceded them when Maso Anello was alive, he left them quiet and very consoled, returning a fair while after mid-day to Castelnuovo.50 47 The decree appears in Tutini-Verde (Racconto della sollevatione, p. 76). 48 According to Donzelli (Partenope liberata, p. 70), the brother’s and brother-in-law’s pardons happened as follows: “The Eletto, aware that the people were unhappy about it […] alerted the viceroy, who at once, to avoid disorders, had put out in print, in friendly terms, a special pardon for those two men.” 49 In reality, the viceroy had always kept an eye on Giovanni, as Capecelatro recounts; Giovanni was entrusted to a merchant, Capecelatro, Diario, p. 98; the rumour of his poisoning is attested in Fuidoro, Successi historici, p. 163. 50 Capecelatro, Diario, p. 100. The Anonymous Casanatense happened to be at the market at the moment when the duke appeared and explains that the viceroy was particularly affectionate towards the people. In his description one senses his own position, critical of the regime but

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Meanwhile, the Duke of Arcos sent to the market the Eletto del Popolo, Francesco Arpaia, tasked with taking up an inventory of property Masaniello had set aside. Pollio, who went with him, speaks of it: “He [Arpaia] summoned the scribe Vito Tonno Cesarano to write up the said goods, even though I was present for the occasion to accompany the said Eletto del Popolo, my companion. And many said that the accomplices, killers of Tomaso Aniello, had seized a great quantity of gold, silver, and chests of coin, carried off on that said night.”51 Tutini and Verde give the same report, speaking of the greed of the Spaniards: “And because the Spaniards were greedy for money, they sent many soldiers to Masaniello’s house to guard all those chests (there were a lot of them) full of money and silver and jewels taken from the house of the Duke of Maddaloni, but also from others too.”52 Genoino had a similar task. He wrote, in his own hand, a decree he then had published.53 Masaniello might be dead, but no word of pity was wasted on him. Here is the decree, signed by Genoino, dated 16 July: It is ordered and commanded to all and whatsoever persons of whatsoever status, grade, and condition that within the term of twenty-four hours they must restore, and give note in our power all goods whatsoever, that is gold, coin, silver, pictures and other furnishings of whatsoever person taken by the late Thomase Aniello d’Amalfi or by others in his name from whatsoever person, and house and also [notice] of into whose keeping the said goods had gone, under pain of confiscation of their goods, of natural death, and [of] demolition of their houses.

And ignorance was no excuse. loyal: “It could bring tears to the eyes, to see with how much love that lord was gracious to the people, giving them a thousand signs of his benevolence.” (f. 72r). 51 Pollio, Historia del Regno di Napoli, c. 43r. Galasso has discussed the other moves of the viceroy at this juncture, from his interventions in the provinces to his provisions to stock back up on horses and fighting men, on the night between 16 and 17 July: Galasso, Il Regno di Napoli, pp. 326–327. 52 Tutini-Verde, Racconto della sollevatione, p. 76. By linking Naples to other, less fortunate lands held by the Spaniards, Tutini and Verde aligned themselves with a very critical public discussion for which the case of the Americas was “probatory, and decisive, concerning the methods and goals of Spanish governance.” See Francesca Cantù, “Spagnolismo e antispagnolismo nella disputa del Nuovo Mondo,” in Alle origini di una nazione. Antispagnolismo e identità italiana, edited by Aurelio Musi (Milan: Guerini e Associati, 2003), pp. 135–160. 53 The decree is signed by Giulio Genoino and dated “16 luglio 1647.” It was published by Roberto Mollo, “Stampatore del Fedelissimo Popolo”: it appears in Raccolta di bandi, ms. BNN X B 92.

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4. Letters: Thanks to God… Once back home, the cardinal, the viceroy, and the papal nuncio set their hands to writing letters. The cardinal wrote to the pope that it all had ended in accord with the people’s will: having become loathsome to the people themselves and to his backers, this morning, after I had left the church of the Carmine […] and returned home, in the cloister of the same convent he was killed […]. This city and people must recognise [the cardinal later added] the grace done on its behalf by His Divine Majesty [God], having extinguished the trouble-maker and restored the lost peace.54

The Duke of Arcos, instead, wrote to the king: These turbulences have taken a turn for the better because, knowing the risk which the service of Your Majesty would run if it had been attempted to subject by force so unchecked a violence, it seemed convenient to reach the goal with ability, and so I have arranged with the captains of the streets of the city and with the more authoritative men so that, along with the artisans, they opposed the tumult and God has wished them to fulfill their intent. This morning, they themselves have cut off the head of Masaniello.

So, he, too, attributed it all to the people and to God; this letter was also rather coy, omitting the price on his head and other details.55 The nuncio, Altieri, meanwhile, wrote to the pope explaining nothing, clearly sure that his holiness had already been informed, saying that, after Masaniello’s death, he had gone to the viceroy and had been received “with particular affection.” The viceroy’s children had come to meet him, he writes almost feelingly – he with whom the duke had had his problems. Then, 54 The cardinal’s contentment at Masaniello’s death is explicit: “and we are (with the viceroy and the Collateral). At that hour, between the fifteenth and the sixteenth hour [mid-afternoon], we came to the archbishop’s palace to render thanks to Blessed God, to the Most Blessed Virgin, and to glorious San Gennaro, for having extinguished that disturber, and restored the lost tranquility”: Filomarino, Lettere, p. 387. 55 The viceroy finished his letter by asking the king to send him a fleet, as he had learned that some “men of ill will” had asked for French invervention, and Rome was pushing hard in that same direction. Note that there was no word of the capitoli. There was no intention to respect them: “Il duca d’Arcos al re, Napoli 16 luglio 1647,” in Villari, Per il re o per la patria, pp. 153–155.

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the viceroy’s consort also had received him “with greatest kindness.”56 It was clear that the nobles were happy to see Masaniello dead. Friar Molini, returning to his convent from the market, saw them embracing one another as they left the castle.57 The Carafa took advantage of the new climate. They went secretly, mistrusting the people, to repossess Peppe’s remains, stowed in a cage and hoisted above the San Gennaro gate, with the label, “This is the head of D. Peppo [sic] Carafa of Maddalone [sic], traitor to the most faithful people of Naples.” They put the remains in a silver basin and covered them with a silken cloth. They then went to the parish church of San Giovanni a Porta and had them interred. They abandoned the “more sumptuous demonstration of a funeral, so as not to awaken the odium of the people.”58

5.

The Bite of the Tarantula

This “quiet” soon vanished. A mounted nobleman was pleased to vaunt the recent change before some plebeians, goading them, “You picked a fight with us nobles? You will see if, before four days go by, we will have you eating ashes and not bread!” The commoners strained to reach him, with intent to kill the nobleman.59 They understood that “white bread” hung in the balance. Indeed, the next day, they found that pieces of bread were far lighter than what they had become accustomed to. This fact riled the people. They began to feel Masaniello’s absence. “The commoners began to mutter resentfully, saying, ‘This is the peace, these are the oaths. Yesterday Masaniello died and at once they have broken the promises.’ Almost all the piazze of Naples took up arms and twenty thousand persons gathered, and with drums and with bread on their pikes they said, ‘Let’s finish it for once and all’.”60 Then the people met, some 30,000, and sought a new Capopopolo. They thought of Palumbo, but when he said no, they opted for Girolamo Donnarumma, “kinsman of Masaniello who had a shop in the Sellaria of 56 Emilio Altieri, Lettera del 16 luglio, in ASV, vol. 42, cc. 332r–333r. 57 Molini, Racconto, p. 106. 58 Fuidoro, Successi historici, p. 68; further notices in Capecelatro, Diario, p. 99. 59 Sauli, Copia di lettera, p. 379. For others, this encounter with the mounted nobles happened some days after Masaniello’s death. For the anonymous auther of Relatione della sollevatione della città di Napoli, it happened on Thursday, July 18 (f. 57v); for Donzelli, Partenope liberata, f. 69, a few days after the event. 60 Tutini-Verde, Racconto della sollevatione, p. 79.

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charcoal, wood, and preserved fish.”61 They headed for the palace, shouting Masaniello’s name over and over. Among other things, they said: “because of Masaniello’s death, they lacked bread, nor did they [the authorities] observe the decrees, nor the things they had promised.”62 On their way, they met the cardinal, who had just climbed into his carriage to go to the palace. Filomarino, for the umpteenth time, had to find the perfect words. So, in all haste, he warned the viceroy, suggesting that he smack the bakers with an exemplary punishment.63 The viceroy heeded the cardinal. When the viceroy returned to the palace from the castle, where he had taken refuge fearing a new assault, he ordered the crowd, crushed up against the trenches, to go to the bakers and burn them out. So, at Santo Spirito, the Banchi Nuovi, the Duchesca, Mercato, Porta, and Santa Chiara, ovens were burned.64 At the Catania bakery the resentment was especially sharp, “whether because of the short-weight bread, or because they had washed their hands in the innocent blood of their companion.”65 And then the viceroy and the cardinal tried to restore order. The viceroy had some bakers brought to prison, even though they said that the order to short-weight their bread had come from their superiors.66 Then the cardinal, as he writes in a new letter to the pontiff on 19 July, sent his cousin, now head of the food office, and “he at once made the bread bigger, and with this and with other good orders that he gave, concerning foodstuffs and their abundance, he restored quiet in the people.”67 In a ban of 17 July, published on the 18th, the viceroy declared that there had been a meeting of the Eletto, the head of the food supply, and the president of the Camera della Sommaria, in the presence of “a multitude of captains of this most faithful People, and also of a multitude of citizens, 400 in number, and as many more from Mercato, Conceria, and also from every other street” and then they decreed that the palata loaf should weigh “forty ounces.” The viceroy well understood that, to dodge another revolt, he must hew to Masaniello’s route. The forty-ounce bread was a conquest not to be questioned. More than the privileged folk who had suffered arson, whom the viceroy had commanded 61 Ibid., p. 79. Others say that this desired candidate was Masaniello’s brother-in-law. 62 Fuidoro, Successi historici, p. 68. 63 Filomarino, Lettere, pp. 387–388, letter of 19 July. 64 Pollio, Historia del Regno di Napoli, f. 43v; Montanario, Historia del Regno di Napoli, f. 10v; Tutini-Verde, Racconto della sollevatione, p. 79; Donzelli, Partenope liberata, p. 69. 65 De Santis, Historia del tumulto, p. 150, writes that people called Catania “a parricide, for having killed Masaniello.” 66 Tutini-Verde, Racconto della sollevatione, p. 79. 67 Filomarino, Lettere, p. 388; the cardinal’s words are confirmed in Montanario, In questo libro vi sono notate tutte le cose, f. 10v.

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to eschew revenge, the real danger was the people, but that was not the only risk. It was the call for Masaniello, so often heard, from the day after his death. In no time at all, sentiments that had seemed calmed again were flaring. The people began again to suspect the viceroy. His initiatives were read as signs of fear: in the hours of calm, after Masaniello’s death, the viceroy had fortified the palace and summoned hundreds of soldiers. Then, as we have said, he had sent Francesco Arpaia to the market to take the goods and money Masaniello had laid aside. Perhaps he himself did not allow the Catania to shrink the loaves, as part of their reward for killing Masaniello, but he certainly seemed not to care to defend that forty-ounce loaf, now peace’s sine qua non. For all those reasons, the people, writes Filomarino, a good judge of public sentiment, was “so suspicious that it has become mistrustful and jealous even of itself, and shadows and dreams rile it up.”68 Before the palace, some shouted “Masaniello is no longer” but “they had two hundred thousand” like him.69 De Santis recalls: They made it clear, with very loud and raucous shouts, that Masaniello was still warm, and already they [the palace] were starting to turn the words of the accord to mud, and the privileges conceded: that among them were more than one Masaniello of the same zeal, and perhaps of better conduct, with his brain intact, and not touched by the fraudulent drinks of Poggio Reale: that they should not think that they had won the game with the death of that poor fellow, that all with one voice demanded their reward, and the punishment of those who fell short [in the bread they baked].70

At this juncture, once again there came talk of Masaniello’s death. It all seemed clear. He was killed at the viceroy’s behest: “The death of Mas’Anello in the cloister of the Carmine in the manner reported, they say in public, was engineered by the palace.”71 There was talk that the Catania were not to be found: they were sheltering in the castle.72 68 Filomarino, Lettere, p. 389. 69 Sauli, Copia di lettera, p. 379. Before the palace, it is certain, Masanielo was evoked, given the variety of references to him in independent accounts, as appears in Tutini-Verde, Racconto della sollevatione, p. 79: “The people began to speak ill, with resentment, saying ‘This is the peace, these are the oaths? Yesterday Masaniello died and at once they broke the promises’”; also in Fuidoro, Successi historici, p. 68: “The people began to make a stir about this, and, if Masaniello was dead things were not going in the right direction.” 70 De Santis, Historia del tumulto, p. 150. 71 Cose di Napoli, ff. 123r–124v. 72 Pollio, Historia del Regno di Napoli, f. 41v.

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What the Duke of Arcos and Genoino did next failed to quiet the people. The Duke of Arcos, in rebuttal, had arms passed around: “he dispensed from the royal armory of the castle about four thousand muskets to the people, with other munitions, of ball, powder and match. This move was not celebrated. Rather, it was much criticized by persons of judgement who discussed it, and many urged the viceroy to give up this decision, on account of what worse might occur, as soon happened.”73 Genoino aroused much perplexity among both the plebs and the civil population. Hour after hour, he stirred up the people’s odium. Some chroniclers criticize his behaviour. Tutini and Verde explain that he failed to realize that that post as president of the Camera of the Sommaria would bury him for good, rather than rescue him from a life of dire travails. The Spaniards entertained the hope that “his brain would turn around and by this route impel him forward. But the ambitious elder accepted the honour, when he never should have done so, but only serve the people.”74 “He loaded all his household, and the nephews, with [public] offices,” Fuidoro says; “People whispered that Genoino had made the said rising happen with his advice and then had tried to remedy it with the capitoli and with the death of Masaniello.”75 In the ensuing days, the dottore was not obeyed. The lazzari whom Masaniello had kept in hand slipped Genoino’s control, “little esteeming the President’s orders, and the viceroy’s less, as he, as the lesser evil, was required by them to approve the misdeeds they committed.”76 The plebs rediscovered how Masaniello cherished them, and began to feel guilt for 73 Fuidoro, Successi historici, p. 69. The notice also appears in Casanatense Anonymous, Narrazione della rivolta, f. 73v: “The people put out the order that those who had no arms should go to the castle to get arms, balls, powder, and match, and as a result these things were given them, putting the city back in arms.” 74 Tutini-Verde, Racconto della sollevatione, p. 80. Needless to say, these two authors were not wrong about Genoino. Capecelatro, their polar opposite, after writing that Genoino was enjoying his good fortune amid music and banquets “poco convenevoli ad un sacerdote e vecchio di ottanta anni [little befitting a priest and an old man of eighty years],” writes that the viceroy, “per adescarlo [to beguile him],” had also appointed him as vicecancelliere of the Kingdom (Diario, p. 109). 75 Fuidoro, Successi historici, p. 69. Few writers are sparing of Genoino: among them Giraffi and the anonymous author of the Vita di Masaniello. Fuidoro writes, inter alia: “Giulio Genoino for having carried himself rather well in the rebellion, and not having been a traitor either to the prince or to the people, deserved the charge of President of the Camera.” (f. 223v). 76 Piacente, Le rivoluzioni del Regno, p. 67.

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having let him down.77 The recent past gelled a sequence of images of the Capopopolo, remembered as generous, as determined to secure the food supply, as innocent victim. What rankled most was the image of his atrocious end at the church of the Carmine, full of people, where it should have been possible to block the killers. As if “bitten by a tarantula,” the lower classes sank into those sad thoughts, because the “bad choice fills the memory,” and they sought to re-find themselves, doing what they could for his poor remains and his memory. So it was that a diffuse desire arose to offer him a splendid funeral, the most majestic ever seen.78 The chroniclers speak of sentiments shared by “the worthy men” and the plebs. The first adduced politic reasons for not leaving that severed head “in the hand of enemies,”79 or shouted that they should have healed Masaniello because he was not mad but sick.80 Many thus began to bewail the death: “We have lost our prophet benefactor holy man, who spoke through the mouth of the Holy Spirit.” With those tears, grieving and fierce, “they went to his Eminence [the cardinal] to supplicate him, that he give them permission, for they wanted to bury the corpse of Masaniello, a holy man who had died for the people, and to give him all those honours he deserved.”81 The cardinal had little choice. Had he not consented, writes Sauli, they would have burned his palace.82 It was the same for the viceroy: “A mob of them went with arms and beating drums 77 Fuidoro, Successi historici, p. 71: “On account of this general hatred, the people chose not to give up its arms, but gathered more supplies and at the same time, as the memory of the murdered Masaniello revived, [they felt resentment] against the conspirators, and [then] those of the Mercato, and others, sorry that they had not responded with their feelings, wanted to patch things up by at least honouring the corpse with a memorable funeral.” 78 The allusion here is to Ernesto De Martino, La terra del rimorso. Contributo a una storia religiosa del sud, introduction by G. Galasso (Milan, Il Saggiatore, 1976), p. 178 [The land of remorse: a study of southern Italian tarantism, translated and annotaded by Dorothy Louise Zinn, foreword by Vincent Crapanzano (London: Free Association books, 2005)]. We see talk of repentance in Tutini-Verde: “The popular party, seeing so many strategems and inventions of the Spaniards, who were preparing for revenge, regretting having lost Masaniello, who had, even if at the end he was crazy, governed and liberated the city from its burdens and kept it fed, and they began to mourn his death.” (Racconto della sollevatione, p. 81). 79 Pollio, Historia del Regno di Napoli, f. 45v. The anonymous author of Storia di Masaniello writes of those desires not to abandon the head, for reasons “well laid out and said with rhetoric by sowers of discord, [they] produced rather poisonous fruit.” (f. 44r). 80 Anonymous, Storia di Masaniello, f. 44v. Not mad but sick – perhaps it was Tutini himself who said this, as we shall see a little later in the revolt. 81 Della Moneca, Istoria delle revoluzioni, f. 63r. 82 “It was necessary for the lord cardinal to go there, and the people wanted him to order the clergy to carry out the funeral, for otherwise they would have burned his house and the palace of the archbishopric”: Sauli, Copia di lettera, p. 380.

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and with the usual fury in front of the royal palace, to seek permission from His Excellency to look for the body of Masaniello, killed against the common will.”83 So, the cardinal ordered all the priests to take part in the funeral, that or pay a fine.84 The Duke of Arcos for his part decreed that they hold a funeral worthy of a “Capitan Generale.”85 So, it came about that, by agreement of both the great civic authorities, worried by a situation once more forbidding, Masaniello’s funeral was indeed the most majestic ever celebrated in Naples, and, said many witnesses, in the whole of human history, for never had been so honoured any king or pope.

83 Fuidoro, Successi historici, p. 71. 84 Among others who wrote this was Fra’ Molini, Racconto, p. 113: whoever failed to go would have to pay a four-ducat fine. 85 Anonymous, Relatione della sollevatione seguita in Napoli alli 7 Luglio 1647, f. 61r.

XII. The Funeral Abstract This chapter describes Masaniello’s majestic funeral, citing close witnesses. The ceremony, with its eloquent grave symbols – Christian, civic, and military – bespeaks multiple desires: of the viceroy, loath to figure as the killing’s chief backer; of the people, keen to show its unwillingness to forget Masaniello, whom they identify with the wins obtained. Popular grief for Masaniello’s atrocious death waxes in synchrony with regret and fear, spurring majestic prayers and wild keenings for a man who, in death, assumes a martyr’s, even a saviour’s aura. In some litanies to the Madonna he is called liberator of the fatherland. Keywords: funeral, ceremonies, remorse, grief, fear, miracles

So it came about that, on the evening of the 17th, boys went to rescue Masaniello’s remains. Tutini and Verde relate that his friend, Mercurio Cimmino, grieving his death greatly, paid ten ducats to some youngsters to bring him to the Carmine.1 Masaniello’s body lay near a mill. The boys fetched it, washed it, and, leaving it on the bank of the creek under the guard of some of them, all the rest went to the house of the mother of Carlo and Salvatore Cataneo, who were his main killers, asked her for a sheet, and threatened, if she refused it, to burn her house. Quickly given the best she had, they then returned to his cadaver, and, washing it again, laid him in it.2

Then, they went looking for the head, which had been thrown into the Fosse di Grano, a part of the grain storage complex. They worked fast because Michelangelo Ardizzone, who oversaw those places, had had a cannon 1 Tutini-Verde, Racconto della sollevatione, p. 82. 2 Capecelatro, Diario, p. 103.

D’Alessio, S. Masaniello. The Life and Afterlife of a Neapolitan Revolutionary Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2022 doi: 10.5117/9789463721455_ch12

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installed there. Masaniello’s remains were then brought back to the Carmine. There they were washed again in a tank filled with wine and myrrh, and sewn back together. Masaniello was once more whole. They placed on his head a hat with a splendid big feather, in his hands the sword and staff “of Capitan Generale,” and they laid him on a bier, and then covered him with a velvet cloth with a gold border, belonging to the Carmine.3 The bier was installed in front of the great altar, where it remained for several hours. “It is not believable how big a crowd of the people came running, especially humble women, and other most lowly persons.”4 Then the plebs “began to celebrate Masaniello as a saint who did miracles.” While they were preparing the funeral, the cardinal called the priest of the church of Santa Caterina, Masaniello’s church, to ask him to send the clergy of his confraternity to the Carmine. But the father replied that he found that hard to do, as the defunct had been excommunicated. It had been eight years since he last made his Easter confession. There had even been a trial put in motion at the archbishop’s court. The cardinal, wanting to check the facts, swiftly had the trial papers in his hands. Still, as the whole people wanted to honour Masaniello, he allowed the funeral and burial.5 Let us pause for a moment to ponder once more how they sewed Masaniello’s corpse back together. It was not the first time in history such a thing took place. It had happened earlier, but not at Naples. In 1559, at Ferrara, Niccolò di Lionello d’Este, nephew of Ercole, assayed a coup d’état against his ducal uncle, his rival for succeeding Borso d’Este. “Married into the Gonzaga, Niccolò sailed down the Po from Mantuan territory with five ships full of armed men. He took advantage of a gap in the walls to enter the city and seemed to have it in hand; he freed all the prisoners and promised to cut the price of grain.”6 But Ercole’s militias, responding swiftly, won the upper hand. Niccolò ended up in two pieces, under the mannaia, a kind of guillotine. Still, soon after, “the bonds of blood and caste won out.” Ercole decided to honour his nephew’s remains. So, he ordered that the head be sewn back onto the body and that Niccolò be granted a majestic funeral. The individual had had his punishment, but the family’s honour remained intact. Masaniello’s 3 Pollio, Historia del Regno di Napoli, f. 47r. 4 Capecelatro, Diario, p. 103. 5 The source cited here is strikingly precise: Tutini-Verde, Racconto della sollevatione, p. 82: they write that a “fight could break out, as all the soldiers of the people were armed.” 6 The quotation here, like the others that follow, comes from Giovanni Ricci, Il principe e la morte. Corpo, cuore, effigie nel Rinascimento (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1998), pp. 111 ff.

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resewing, if not new, was nevertheless revolutionary, as he was of the plebs, not noble. And, this time, unlike with Niccolò, the repairs came with an express desire to expiate a tragedy. At the Carmine, seeing him once more, now motionless, laid out on the bier at the centre of the church, many burst into tears. They felt, so we read, “love, grief, anger.” The women sought to gather around him, as if mothering him. In one chronicle we read: There gathered a plebeian crowd of the lowest little women with the rosary in their hand and, kneeling, they prayed God for that soul, with swelling tears, and, following their example, so did their children, a thing that would melt any stone. By this crowd, Masaniello’s innocence was canonized, and his defence of the fatherland, as they never had surfeit of surrounding that cadaver with sobs, sighs, and laments and even ululations, repeating, “Here is the liberator of the oppressions of the fatherland, this is the reward he was given, murdering him.”7

These women, too, awoke pity; they too were a moving spectacle. That is how dottore Simonetta portrayed them: “with their hands they threw blessed holy water on him.” “Seeing them, everyone was moved to compassion, some of those poor folk kissed him, one the hand, another some other part, with cries, and horrible wailing, and they said that there had died their liberator of the fatherland, and prophet.”8 Masaniello had been a prophet. In one account, it is recorded that he said that “however much he did for the benefit of his city, that he knew well that when he had repaired it, within three days he would be killed on the wheel or dragged, and that still the people should remember him, and all answered ‘and we too want to die with you’.” These are almost the same words that Thomas brought back to the other apostles when he learned that Jesus had gone into Judea to revive Lazarus. “Let us go also, that we may die with him.” (John, XI, 16).9 7 Fuidoro, Successi historici p. 71. The women who could not approach were even more distraught: “they scratched their heads and faces, grieving his death”: De Santis, Historia del tumulto, p. 151. 8 Simonetta, Historia delle rivoluzioni di Napoli, f. 102r. Pollio writes: “Indoors at the Carmine one could not breathe, so infinite was the crowd, and many did one or another act of charity for that soul who had died for his fatherland, so that all that day long all one could do was tell of the generosity, and the swarming of that people so filled with pity.” Historia del Regno di Napoli, f. 240v. 9 Anonymous, Fatti di Masaniello, in SNSP, XXVIII D 19, f. 18v.

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Among those women, a rumour soon made the rounds: Masaniello had come back to life. They noted that his eyes were open.10 Or, perhaps they saw how, as the bier moved through crowds jostling the better to see him, his body also moved. One way or the other, the rumour swiftly spread among the thousands in the church, in part because Masaniello, with his tragic end, really did seem like Christ. Naturally, “everyone spoke his fable.” Many “said that he had given a sign with his hand and taken the rosary, that he had spoken.”11 Sauli, too, heard that rumour about the rosary. He wrote, “As he was seen without a rosary in his hand, he was thrown one that, by chance, tangled with the fingers that he held close together and at once there spread among the people, the more credulous if they were humble, that Masaniello had grasped the rosary and that he did not want to let go of it again. From this arose the rumour that he did miracles and that he sweated, that he had odour, and seemed alive.”12 Whoever doubted that he was a saint risked death. He would be killing Masaniello once more; he would be killing the people.13 A chronicler wrote that, to his eye, Masaniello’s body, which seemed alive, called to mind San Gennaro. The body itself was a sign of his belonging to a “supernatural genus,” “without stiffening as is usual with cadavers, for it had been exposed a whole day to the sun, and into the night, but it was flexible to any bend. And a thing to move you, seeing him all in one piece, intact, was how the hungry and keen greyhounds had sniffed at him without biting him, or nipping him, respecting the man who had made the loaf of bread bigger.”14 Certain that he was a 10 Pollio, Historia del Regno di Napoli, f. 46r, and also Della Moneca, Istoria delle revoluzioni, f. 63r: “They went and found the head, with its eyes open, and they cried loudly ‘Miracle! Miracle! Masaniello is alive,’ and at once many foolish folk and women believed it, and affirmed it to be true, and stubbornly defended the belief.” 11 Fuidoro, Successi historici, p. 72. 12 Pollio’s account, of the perception of the corpse, says: “When a woman desired to kiss the hand and to touch the rosary, as if at the body of a saint, his rosary was held in the joined hands of the cadaver, which were joined in such a fashion that the rosary placed in that bond resisted pulling, that woman raised her voice: ‘See how Tomaso Aniello has taken my rosary and he is holding hard onto it’ and everybody saw this, and that rumour came to the ears of all who were around there, and for that reason it was confirmed that Tomaso Aniello was alive, certainly not only with that infinity of people but also in the whole city.” (Historia del Regno di Napoli, f. 46r). With slight changes this episode of the rosary also appears in Anon., Fatti di Masaniello, f. 18v; Donzelli, Partenope liberata, p. 67, and other accounts. 13 Fuidoro, Successi historici, p. 72; “Many persons were handled roughly because unwilling to believe it, so that people tried to give no sign of putting it in doubt.” (De Santis, Historia del tumulto, p. 151). 14 Anonymous, Fatti di Masaniello, f. 18v.

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saint, some women began to pull out some of his hair to put in their bosoms, like relics.15 At last came the hour to depart. Everything was done with studious attention to detail, even in the short time available. Two distinct desires came together, that of the people, to honour Masaniello as their Capitan Generale, and that of the viceroy and the cardinal to back the people up, and to channel the contentious energy suffusing the event. Under the bier they carved the following: “Thomas Anellus Amalfa patrie sublevator nobilitatis destructor [Thomas Anello from Amalfi raiser of the fatherland, destroyer of the nobility].”16 At the sides were placed ten or more banners, with “the arms of His Majesty and of the Signor Cardinal, of His Excellency and of the People” and another flag that represented Masaniello himself, “a lion with a band sinister around his name.”17 On the covering cloth appeared signs of the gratitude and love many still felt for him, “madness” notwithstanding: flowers, fronds, the long black hair of Berardina, whom the viceroy, to show his magnanimity, let take part in the funeral.18 Two hours before sunset, all the city’s clergy arrived at the Carmine, as the cardinal, shortly before, had commanded them to, under pain of paying several ducats. So, in procession, out came the children of the Loreto, “those who live by rule in the conservatorio [children’s home] of Santa Maria di Loreto,” “two by two in a very long procession,”19 then the clergy of all the other churches: the Annunziata, Sant’ Egidio, all the “chapter and canons of the Chiesa Maggiore.”20 Then came the bier, carried on the shoulders of officials, and many armed companies, “in ordered file, at a slow pace, with drums beating slowly, dully, with weapons down, tearful 15 Donzelli, Partenope liberata, p. 67, and Capecelatro, Diario, pp. 103–104. The phenomena associated with Masaniello evidence a deep awareness of the usual signs of sainthood. On this, see Jean-Michel Sallmann, Naples et ses Saints a l’âge baroque (1540–1750) (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1994), pp. 274 ff. 16 For these words: Anon., Diario del Soccesso nelle Revolutioni Popolari de Napoli dalli 7 di luglio 1647 avanti, SNSP, XXI B 13 bis, f. 5r. 17 Sauli, Copia di lettera, p. 380. 18 Mayorica, I tumulti e revolutioni, f. 99r, and Pollio, Historia del Regno di Napoli, f. 46r. The usage of putting one’s own hair on the bodies of the dead is an extremely ancient custom, clearly still alive at the time. Orestes once put his hair on the tomb of his assassinated father. See Ernesto De Martino, Morte e pianto rituale. Dal lamento funebre antico al pianto di Maria (Turin: Boringhieri, 1975), p. 217. 19 Donzelli, Partenope liberata, p. 67, and Capecelatro, Diario, p. 104. 20 Della Moneca, Istoria delle revoluzioni, f. 63v; Donzelli, Partenope liberata, p. 67 (he mentions 400 priests). Sauli, Copia di lettera, p. 380, offers other figures: “There were more than two hundred torches between the priests and the orphans, and more than 6,000 persons who followed, saying the rosary and litanies, to which they added ‘saint Masaniello, Pray for us!”

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voices, and the lugubrious sound of all the bells.”21 Several officers dragged the corpse of Masaniello’s horse, first ceremonially bled to death.22 There were, say Donzelli and De Fiore, 40,000 or even 50,000 soldiers, all of them armed.23 The women were perhaps 4000, “part of whom carried lit candles in their hands, sobbing, and part of whom sang in tearful tone the Most Holy Rosary for the soul of the defunct.”24 This funeral was, in essence, an extreme act of love, after the many others that had gone with it: the exultations, the bestowal of official titles, of sweets and fresh eggs, of clothing, of salutations from the balconies. But it was too the people’s chance to tell the viceroy that he could not turn back, that for them Masaniello meant the successes they had won – the food supply, the capitoli, his undertaking to assure them a less burdensome future. The Venetian Resident reported, astutely, “He was, as if in a triumph, carried through the whole city in a coffin, with shouts of Viva Masaniello.” For the viceroy and his court, the spectacle held a whiff of terror. But they had no other recourse; they had to absorb its message and answer benignly, with a show of homage to Masaniello, now a symbol of what the people had obtained. To this we shall return. The funeral was majestic, the grandest Naples ever celebrated. Piacente writes, “In the end, his obsequies were so majestic that, so as not to get tangled in the telling, I will say that the funeral of the first monarch in the world could not be celebrated with a grander show.”25 For other chroniclers, too, there had never been a funeral so rich: “no human memory alive could remember an interment more solemn than this, that began with early evening and lasted to the third hour of the night.”26 “No honour was neglected, befitting not only him, but any crowned king whatever.”27 Even the Spaniard Amatore wrote: “the solemn ceremonies used, to carry to burial the earlier scorned and dragged corpse of Tommaso, were to be compared to the triumphs of Roman Caesars. The majestic honours were parents of the public amazement; the train behind was beyond numbering; the burning torches surpassed the number of the stars.”28 21 De Santis, Historia del tumulto, p. 152, adds further details; the drums were “dressed in black, as is the custom at the funerals of Captains General.” (Donzelli, Partenope liberata, p. 67). 22 Della Porta, Causa di stravaganze, f. 101v. 23 Donzelli, Partenope liberata, p. 67, writes: “they did a count of the soldiers and found that they numbered forty thousand”; De Fiore, Racconto de Tumulti popolari, p. 51, speaks of “fifty thousand armed men.” 24 Fuidoro, Successi historici, p. 72, and Donzelli, Partenope liberata, p. 67. 25 Piacente, Le rivoluzioni del Regno, p. 63. 26 De Fiore, Racconto de Tumulti popolari, p. 51. 27 De Santis, Historia del tumulto, p. 152. 28 Amatore, Napoli sollevata, p. 46.

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The chronicles often compare the funeral with that of the marquis of Torrecuso, the year before, and favour Masaniello’s.29 Carlo Andrea Caracciolo, the marquis, a general both able and famous, had fought well at Orbetello in the summer of 1646, when prince Tommaso di Savoia laid siege for France, and, after a light illness, died. Innocenzo Fuidoro’s father had known the man, having served him in Spain’s campaign to retake rebel Barcelona. When the marquis’s son, also at Orbetello, died there, the chronicler’s father was among the men who carried him to the marquis’s tent. The chronicler recounts how the marquis died. The “succourer of places under siege”, came back from Orbetello with a “light fever.” Says Fuidoro, the viceroy, long “jealous” of the marquis, sent him a Spanish physician who, despite the recommendations of the Neapolitan physicians “in the various consultations they held,” wanted to try blood-letting, a stressful therapy, as we know, recommended only for those with scant chance of healing otherwise. And the marquis died. The Duke of Arcos wanted a majestic funeral, to show both the court’s mourning and his own esteem.30 The analogy between the two funerals, Masaniello’s and Torrecuso’s, noted by observers, traced both to their formal traits and, perhaps, to the benevolence the people felt for the marquis. Caracciolo was dressed “with the habit of a professed member of the Order of Santiago.” In his hand was placed “the same sword he was wont to use in battle.” He was “shod in boots in the Spanish fashion, with spurs at the feet.” He seemed “almost still alive,” “seated on a chair of cloth of gold, three steps above the ground, under a backcloth also of gold lamé, on his head a hat of black beaver sporting a white plume, in his hand the baton of nobility, his helmet at his feet atop a little table, and to one side the crown of his title between two torch-holders. Twelve senior servitors of the family carried banners, some of the Caracciolo house, others taken from the enemy.” The people took part in the funeral, as did the nobles, both seggio members and others. At Masaniello’s funeral, by contrast, the nobility was banned. With Torrecuso, the crowd was inf inite, with persons of every kind who came to see, and they could not sunder themselves from the presence of their most 29 Sauli, Copia di lettera, p. 380. The comparison, always to the fishmonger’s funeral’s advantage, also appears in Anon., Relatione della sollevatione della città, f. 57r: “his funeral outdid by a great deal that of Torrecuso”; in Anon., Diario del Soccesso nelle Revolutioni Popolari, f. 5r; and in other accounts. For the analogy between the two funerals, see Rosario Villari, Elogio della dissimulazione, p. 85. 30 Gennaro Quaranta recounted these provisions for Torrecuso’s funeral. At the Vatican Library is a copy of his extremely rare Relacion de la muerte, y entierro del marques de Torrecusa (Madrid: en la imprenta Real, 1647).

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meritorious fellow citizen, as the streets were full of carriages and of people wherever the cadaver had to pass. Towards the twenty-second hour [two hours before dusk], out of the palace came four muted trumpets covered with mourning, with the arms of the marquis, and behind them the large household, who walked three by three,” and so on.31

Caracciolo’s funeral was certainly majestic, but Masaniello’s saw “a participation of the citizens much greater and much less formal, and with a much more imposing military march.”32 The Spaniards, the viceroy especially, and the nobles, despite their effort to tame popular anger with a ceremony avowing fidelity to Spain, quailed at the sight of the imposing crowd. Accounts note the very many candles: “there were more than 200 torches, between the priests and orphans,” but also, on the balconies, one saw candles, lit by express order: “the popular party also gave orders to put lights in all the windows, so that, with the night as splendid as a noon, all could at their ease see the pomp of the death ritual.”33 It was a death rite also rich in sounds of sadness: they played the pipes, and the drums with their cords let loose [for a more muffled thump], “the sound of which wounded the spirits of those present with such pity that few failed to honour that pomp by crying.” The Storia di Masaniello says that one heard, intensely, the throb of hands on breasts, coming from the plebs who followed the coffin.34 The funeral carriage passed through all the city’s high points: from the market to the Vicaria courts, San Lorenzo, the church of the Gesù, via Toledo, the castle square, and past all the seggi, down to those closest to the market – Porto and Portanova – before entering the quarter of the Sellaria 31 The relation of Terrecuso’s funeral appears in part in Caracciolo, “Funerali napoletani a metà Seicento,” Il Fuidoro, July–Oct. 1855: 292–293. The marquis – who died on 5 August 1646 – had won distinction in many military undertakings in Spain’s service. He was indeed well regarded, as one reads in a portrait by Galeazzo Gualdo Priorato, Scena d’huomini illustri d’Italia (Venice: A. Giuliani, 1659): “In a particular fashion that knight enjoyed general good will, and he himself would say that he had recieved some of those graces by which Heaven works miracles in us without our effort.” [not num.]. But, clearly, the rapport between Masaniello and the people was a good deal stronger. The difference between the two was considerable. Masaniello had fought on the people’s behalf, as a loyalist (at least in his public life), Caracciolo had fought for the crown and had the people’s esteem. 32 Villari, Elogio della dissimulazione, p. 85. 33 The first citation here comes from Sauli, Copia di lettera, p. 38, the second from Capecelatro, Diario, p. 104. The number of candles was quite exceptional: “funerals, that often come at dusk, are above all a spectacle of lights. The poorest have only thirteen candles, while the rich have at least a hundred”: Michel Ragon, Lo spazio della morte. Saggio sull’architettura, la decorazione e l’urbanistica funeraria (Naples: Guida, 1986), p. 174. 34 Piacente, Le rivoluzioni del Regno, p. 63, and Anon., Storia di Masaniello, f. 48v.

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and, at last, returning to the Carmine.35 At these places, the armed companies lowered their flags and fired their harquebuses, but with powder alone, to dull the crack of the guns.36 These moments sharpened the intensity, as all could halt and turn their minds to what had happened. Then the procession started slowly up again, for that last walk with Masaniello, where they sang the litanies of the saints and repeated that now he was at the side of God, like San Gennaro.37 In the extraordinary Storia di Masaniello, never published, one reads that some bewailed his death, saying that now the nobility could take revenge without fearing the people’s repugnance, others saying the cadaver has taken the Most Holy Rosary, and prayed God for such a benefactor. Others preached him as the Redeemer of the Fatherland, and as a saint, as restorer of depraved customs, and subjugator of the nobles, as one who brought pride low. And those who said litanies did not fail to place his name in the roster of saints, and they beat their breasts with great tenderness and shouted that he should pray God for his city.38

Among the women, “many there were who, unable to come close, scratched their heads and faces, grieving his death. They were seen by those, who adoring him as a saint, touched him with their rosaries, and then kissed them, and touched their eyes with them, and their foreheads; others scattered flowers over the body, and fronds, and honoured it, and blessed it.”39 Within a few hours of his death, Masaniello had become a “beato” for all, a 35 The route appears in various accounts in Anon., Del entiero y Epitafio que el Pueblo de Napoles hizo a Thomas Anelo caveza del tumulto de aquella ciudad, in BNM, ms. 2378, cc. 325–26. But see also Francesco Carusi, Narrazione del tumulto seguito nella città di Napoli, nella quale si raccontano gli vari avvenimenti di Masanello, e suoi seguaci, dalli 7 di luglio 1647 per insino alli 21 d’agosto del detto anno. Parte prima, raccolta dal dottor F. C., in cui le cose più notabili distintamente si contengono, SNSP ms. XXI C 20, f. 11r. 36 “L’altre milizie facevano spalliera per tutte le vie, e nel passar il cadavero abbattevano le bandiere, e l’armi” [The other militias stood along the route on all the streets and when the body passed they lowered their flags]. (De Santis, Historia del tumulto, p. 152; Capecelatro, Diario, p. 105); the flags were lowered “to let him pass across them,” Montanario, In questo libro vi sono notate tutte le cose, f. 11r. 37 Mayorica, I tumulti e revolutioni, f. 100r. 38 Anon., Storia di Masaniello, f. 48v. See also Della Porta, Causa di stravaganze, f. 99r: “they treated him like a sanctified person, and in particular those plebeian women, who accordingly touched his body with holy beads and rosaries, and keeping shreds of his clothing as relics for their prayers and litanies, they said, ‘Blessed Masaniello Pray for us’.” 39 De Santis, Historia del tumulto, p. 151.

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blessed figure. As we have said, as often happened the people did not wait for assent from above to beatify their own hero. Masaniello’s past conduct, as a blasphemer, a dissolute man, counted for naught: he had been purified by “the blood poured with his martyrdom.” Besides, the churches of Naples “were full of last-minute martyrs, by whose standard the life of Masaniello seemed a shining mirror.”40 As people left the funeral, rumours abounded about the “signs of life” his body had given. Some with an oath affirmed to have seen the head reunited with the bust. Others to have spoken with him, and received reply; others to have heard him speak to the people; other to have with their own eyes seen a dove descend from the sky and come to rest on his head; many [saw] that with a happy face he blessed the people, animating it to carry on the enterprise and to persevere in its accustomed fidelity, and devotion to its king. 41

A chronicler reports: I was content to see him pass down one street and having satisfied my curiosity about that pomp I retired, and I laughed at what my neighbour told me, and as everybody persisted in the stubbornness of having seen him [give signs of life], it made me doubt until a friend of mine came back from the Carmine, where he had seen him from very close, and he made clear to me this universal madness of the people, adding that he had met one person who swore, and swore falsely, that he had seen him open his eyes, and reported words that he had said, and that one had to believe lies, or perhaps heresies, and to preach them as Gospels, to adore, to idol-worship Masaniello. 42

The rumours arose from a clear refusal to accept that death. Many tears were shed that night for that man of twenty-seven, out of his wits, and killed so 40 Quoting Romeo De Maio, Pittura e controriforma (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1983), pp. 153 ff. An inquisitor indeed tried to conduct an investigation of the case but was persuaded to let the thing go, after a prudent intervention by a man of letters, Mario Rota. For the inquisitor, see Maiolino Bisaccioni, Historia delle guerre civili di questi ultimi tempi (Bologna: C. Zenero, 1653), p. 423. 41 De Fiore, Racconto de Tumulti, p. 50. Of the cited opinions reported by De Fiore, the most interesting is the last one, as it suggests a desire to use Masaniello, even after his death, to stem the already spreading anti-Spanish sentiment. 42 Anon., Storia di Masaniello, f. 48v.

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frightfully: “God forgive the one who has killed the most faithful father of his fatherland, he has liberated us from so many travails.”43 In deep night, the portable hearse arrived before the palace. The men who bore it on their shoulders halted. The commotion rose higher than ever. The viceroy saw it all from on high. One is reminded of Tacitus, writing of Tiberius, who shunned the funeral of Germanicus, not wanting to show his hypocritical feigned grief.44 Tutini and Verde write that the viceroy and the Collateral felt great disdain, and if they could have at that time brought down the people, they would have done so. Nevertheless, the viceroy, with simulation, pretending to be on the side of the popular party, sent twelve pages with twelve lit torches, who accompanied Masaniello’s corpse. And the Spanish soldiers, as they went by, lowered their banners to the ground, and their arms too, recognizing him as Capitan Generale, and as a sign of reverence. 45

The viceroy let the ceremonial speak for him: he made the standards come down, and commanded salutes, firing blank charges, and “all the other ceremonies as a generalissimo, in the way that was observed months earlier at the burial of the Marquis di Torrecuso, general of His Majesty.”46 In the end, the bier was carried back to church. It was the third hour of the night, say most observers. The moment had come to say farewell. There was then a new moment of strong emotion: everyone tried to come in, to be close to Masaniello to the end. One reporter who succeeded tells that one heard “a great crying, sighs, howls, and shouts.”47 Down to the end, there was resistance, an attempt to block the burial, which would have marked with finality that contact was no more. Here is one account: 43 Anon., Giornale Istorico, f. 23v. 44 Emperor Tiberius was the adoptive father of Germanicus. Tacitus writes that he failed to take part in his funeral. By his actions, the viceroy signaled his magnanimity, but from a distant vantage-point that stressed his superiority to everyone. For Tiberius and Germanicus: Tacitus, Annales, III 3. 45 Tutini-Verde, Racconto della sollevatione, p. 83. 46 “Nonetheless, the viceroy, with simulation, pretending to be on the side of the popular party, sent twelve pages with twelve torches to accompany Masaniello’s body” (ibid.). The observers were not in error: in a letter to the king, the viceroy spoke of insolence in the matter of the honours granted Masaniello. “Their insolence came to the point that they carried him to burial […] making the funeral procession pass before the windows of the palace.” Il duca d’Arcos al re, Napoli 23 luglio 1647 in Villari, Per il re o per la patria, p. 157. 47 Anonymous, Giornale istorico, f. 23v.

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There is no easy way to express the strong feeling that the people showed at this act of burying Tomaso Anello, visible in the faces of the passionate, a grief mixed with anger. This was also denoted by the words, mixed with the same feelings, that issued from their mouths. There were many there who said that Tomaso Anello had come back to life. And if per misadventure anyone had said otherwise, he would have put his life at manifest risk. 48

“There were women so cruel and lazzari of such tenacious impression,” writes another, “that even when he was conducted to the tomb they asserted that he was miraculously resurrected, and that they would get the highest grace by touching the rosaries to that corpse, as if he really had been recognized by the pontiffs as a saint.”49 There, the office of the dead was sung solemnly, and he was then buried with great honour in a chapel, then called “of the creche,” to the left of the altar, like a king of the city.50 The people decided to erect for him a “most beautiful statue of marble for perpetual memory of the thing.” On the stone that was placed on the tomb was written [in Latin]: “Masaniello of Amalfi, his age twenty-four, liberator of the city and of all the kingdom of Naples. Just, prudent, and among all most glorious. Anno Domini 1647” (one finds this information in the anonymous account: La morte e sontuoso funerale di Tomaso Aniello d’Amalfi).51 The next morning the demonstrations in Masaniello’s honour continued. Mayorica reports “great sacrifices and sung masses in diverse churches.”52 The Latin text to be carved on the mausoleum under construction in the market was already set (in a volume at the Vatican it is indeed dated “17 July.”). The text spoke of the tyranny of the nobles, and remembered the Spanish kings who had already accorded those privileges that the duke of Arcos had once more conceded to the city. It defined Masaniello as the “guide” of an unconquered people. The message did not spring from a wish to claim clearly and strongly the outcome of those days; it aimed rather to reassure 48 Donzelli, Partenope liberata, p. 67. 49 Piacente, Le rivoluzioni del Regno, p. 63. 50 It is not known whether the cardinal took part: it is certain that, on the way, he accompanied the bier, but he seems not to have escorted it all the way (Mayorica, I tumulti e revolutioni, f. 100r). Masaniello was now more than a king: the nobles were wont to choose churches or chapels near their own seggi, to mark “their belonging to those fortresses that are their seggi.” Their choice this time bespoke two desires: to put Masaniello both in a church and at the market. See Maria Antonietta Visceglia, Il bisogno di eternità. I comportamenti aristocratici a Napoli in età moderna (Naples: Guida, 1988), pp. 122–139. 51 ASV, Vat. Lat. 11736 (Misc. Arm. III 64), f. 53r. 52 Mayorica, I tumulti e revolutioni, f. 100r.

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the people and the viceroy: after Masaniello, even though it was clear to many that he had been a victim of the Duke of Arcos, if not of him alone, they were not calling into question the relationship with Spain. They were expectant: The tyranny of the nobles the unaccustomed oppressions and taxes on the kingdom, on the citizens and others, beyond the order of things and of nature violently extorted has been repressed. Unbroken faith having been kept in the Virgin of Carmel Mother of God, on the day 7 July, the public gabelle, the criminal secret enemies of the Fatherland, were burned, put to flight, scattered, and removed. The privileges of Ferdinand I, and Frederic [IV of Aragon] the Aragonese kings, of Charles V Emperor and Kaiser, were confirmed, renewed, increased. Under Philip V, Catholic King, Don Roderigo Ponce de Léon, Duke of Arcos, acting in the king’s stead; With Thomas Aniello de Amalfi, as leader of the unconquered people, its pristine liberty now reclaimed. The most faithful Neapolitan people placed this mausoleum as an inspiration. to posterity in memory of the victory won.53 53 The text appears in Villari, Elogio della dissimulazione, p. 126: “Nobilium tyrannide / Inusitatis oppressionibus et angariis / in Regnum, Cives, et Exteros / Praeter rerum et naturae ordinem / Violenter extortis/ Repressa; / Virgini Matri Dei Carmeli / Die 7 Iulii 1647 Gabellis / Publicis,

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Meanwhile, over the next days, Masaniello would be prayed to like a saint, and then reclaimed in various literary texts that would orient readers in the months of the “war” against the Spaniards. In the anonymous Relazione della sollevatione della città di Napoli, written around 30 July, there is an extraordinary account of the birth in Naples of real forms of collective prayer for the defunct: When the people saw the food supply and abundance in which the city today lives, caused by Captain Tomas’Aniello, and bought with his blood, even though it had with the beginning of his death done him outrage with the dragging of his body, nonetheless it [Naples] does not cease, after having given him an honoured burial with a splendid funeral, to help raise his soul, while in all the storerooms and courtyards the women recite the rosary for his soul, and in the evening at 24 hours [sundown], at all the Madonnas that are found along the streets, painted on the walls, which in Naples are infinite, there gather the children of those women and they sing for his soul the litanies of the Madonna, and those who do the responses say [in Latin] “Give him peace,” and so they pray for him as liberator of the fatherland, and the bringer of food to a city so hungry. And on account of the desire to take revenge on the authors and accomplices of his death, there is great fear of a new, and greater sedition, because the plebs wants absolutely to get its hands on Salvatore Catania and the other conspirators, and also Andrea Naclerio, tribune the year before, whom the viceroy is keeping safe in the castle. But it is becoming clear that the His Excellency had arranged the death of [Masaniello]. The women adore him almost as a saint, and martyr, and the old women at his tomb pray as to a saint, touch with their rosaries the earth that covers it, and kiss it like a holy relic.54

Were the plebs the only ones in that cult? When we survey the writings, although the dottori probably took no part in these rites, still, many of them were disinclined to cancel Masaniello, whether out of gratitude, or out of political strategy. Facinorosis secretis Patriae / Hostibus / Incensis, fugatis, prodigatis / Sublatis / Inconcussa fide servata / Ferdinandi Primi et Federici / Aragonensium Regium / Caroli Quinti Imperatoris Caesaris / conf irmatis, renovatis, auctis / Privilegiis, / Philippo Quinto Rege Cattolico / D. Roderigo Pons de Leone/ Duca d’Arcos / Regis vicem gerente / Thoma Aniello de Amalfi / Invicti populi / Duce/ Pristina libertate redempta / Fidelissimus Populus Neapolitanus / Mausoleum / In reportatae victoriae memoriam / Posteris excitamentum / Posuit.” On the circulation of this text, via Howell, see Dini, Masaniello, p. 35. 54 Anonymous, Relatione della sollevatione della città di Napoli, ff. 71r.

XIII. The Judgments of Those Who Knew the Most Abstract With Masaniello dead, the sources then comment. Some are swift to say that he had to die. So write Giraffi and Tontoli, men close to Cardinal Filomarino. Others assert that Masaniello had acted for the common good. The very positive assessment by Verde and Tutini is striking; they are swift to speak of the error of the populace in its failure to protect Masaniello. No leader at hand is so clear, so able to speak with all, and to impose his will. The brevity of his captaincy plays in Masaniello’s favour. Meanwhile, the city’s dialogue with the viceroy begins to falter. Keywords: seventeenth-century historiography, Giraff i, Tontoli, Tutini, Verde, opinions on Masaniello

In the circle of the chronicles we have consulted, the synthetic views of the Masaniello affair are rare. In some of them, as we have already seen in part, the judgement is negative. As we have noted, Cardinal Filomarino, Giraffi, and Tontoli speak of him as a man who changed in the course of those days: from humble, he became a tyrant. For Giraffi, he tried to transgress every boundary: “he wanted to subjugate the earth, to tame the ocean, to make war on the world, rub shoulders with the stars, and see the rising and setting of the sun,” until he was found, like Absalom, the victim of his own ambition. Absalom, remember, died hanging from a tree by his own long hair.1 So, Masaniello condemned himself to his tragic end. Tontoli is even more explicit. Masaniello was dead “with good reason”: ambition, pride 1 Seneca, Thyestes, Act III, 444. Giraffi very likely had in mind Tomaso Garzoni da Bagnocavallo, Il teatro de’ vari cervelli e diversi cervelli mondani (Venice: F.A. Zoppini, 1585), a book rich in citations to fill out its demonstration of ambition’s risks. On such a collection of observations, see Gianfranco Borrelli, “Tassonomia dei cervelli malinconici secondo Tomaso Garzoni,” in

D’Alessio, S. Masaniello. The Life and Afterlife of a Neapolitan Revolutionary Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2022 doi: 10.5117/9789463721455_ch13

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or madness were mortal sins. “Masaniello died with good reason because the provoker of sedition is a capital criminal; [he quotes the jurist Baldus]: he who provokes a tumult, and a clamour in the people, ought to die, the punishment of sedition.” He died because a kingdom cannot have two suns, nor can the world, as Seneca said.2 The Capopopolo was also condemned on the basis of a series of moral examples, arguments, and religious and juridical doctrines. Even learned Buraña, in his treatise some years later, insisted on the “fatality” of Masaniello’s “sin”: [In Spanish] The Angelic Doctor Saint Thomas says that sedition is a special sin, that is a fighting among the multitude, or preparation for war: “Sedition, however, is a sin of a ‘special’ nature [i.e. one defied by its own species] to wit, mutual acts of f ighting between the parts of a multitude, or preparation for a f ight [pugna].” Titus Livius def ined sedition as what from one city makes two [...]. And all the jurisconsults who treat of this “enormous crime,” and in particular Folerius, Deciano, Iulius Clarus, Baiardo to the very Clarus, Barbosa, Rolando, Farinacci, Iodoco Peregrino and Bosius defend the position that it is the crime of lèse majesté, and even one demanding the damnatio memoriae [legal oblivion].3

Weighty words! Amatore preferred instead to make a joking matter of it, imagining Masaniello as the son of blindfolded Fortuna, who had, on that occasion, amused herself by plucking a poor fisherman “from the element of water,” to “burn and consume the land.” Goddess Fortune speaks: Transporting him from the miseries of the sea, I enticed him with the rich treasures of the land, I enriched him with its evanescent opulences, and I caused him to prosper with its sudden delights. I awakened envy, which, Borelli, Non far novità. Alle radici della cultura italiana della conservazione politica (Naples: Bibliopolis, 2000), pp. 108–112. 2 Tontoli, Il Mas’Aniello, p. 143. The author, here, leans on two familiar maxims: “Provocans tumultum, et clamorem in Populo, debet mori, poena seditionis” (Baldus) and “Regnum non duos capit, neque mundus duos Soles” (Seneca), to buttress his own conviction that Masaniello had to end badly. 3 The original Latin: “Est autem seditio speciale peccatum, scilicet mutua impugnatio inter partes multitudinis”; “Seditio ex una duas Civitates eff icit”: Buraña, Batalla peregrina entre amor y fidelidad (Mantoa Carpentana: [no publisher], 1651), vol. I, p. 186. As we see here, the author, who dedicates his work to Philip IV and Queen Maria Anna of Austria, writes in support of those who desired Masaniello’s death, as much as do Tontoli’s writings.

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deep in sleep, barely remembered him; with the art of fraudulent tricks I ended by blinding the eyes of intellect. I enticed him with gold, so that it served as his stumbling block at the precipice. I lent him the wings of Icarus, and he, being little prudent, was not aware of the double nature of her intention, as, when she raised him to such violent greatness, she gave him the final collapse.

All the efforts of the people were here transfigured into a fable turning on the Capopopolo. The people and its revolt are stripped of seriousness. In many places, Amatore stresses the paradoxical character of what happened to Masaniello, a sign of the man’s being in the sway of two unstable characters, Fortuna and Plebs. “In one instant both obeyed, and refused obedience, honoured and derided, loved and abhorred, elevated to the stars.”4 Why then had this base creature received so many honours on the part of the civic authorities? In his allegorical account, “Curiosità,” before the funeral car, poses this question to the cardinal, who answers that Masaniello was “honoured only because he was acclaimed father of the fatherland” and that the funeral was conceded “by the Excellency of the Duke of Arcos, for ends offered to him by the most prudent policy and industrious generosity.” Closer to the actual facts are other stocktakings that interest us more. Piacente wanted to record Masaniello with a sort of epitaph, as one did with the great: “Created capo of the people, he showed spirit, intrepidity, and severity no less in punishing the guilt of others, than in sustaining the defence of those who rose up; he was quick to credit, not very obstinate, and little given to rapine. He lived eight days, adored rather as a celestial spirit than as an earth-bound prince, but ended his life before he learned to reign.”5 This epitaph seems born of a sincere appreciation of Masaniello. But more sympathetic are the summings-up of the “anti-Spaniards,” the Count of Modène, and Tutini and Verde. Modène dedicated some of his Réflexions to the Masaniello affair: “On the uprising caused by Masaniello, and different judgements that one can make on this subject.”6 The revolution was the effect, said the count, of God’s judgements, and Masaniello’s death owed more to divine will than to Spanish guile. This is where the count parts company with Giraffi, whom the count did heed in what he wrote about Masaniello’s final days, where 4 Amatore, Napoli sollevata, p. 41. 5 Piacente, Le rivoluzioni del Regno, p. 61. 6 “Sur le soulèvement causé par Masanielle, et différens jugemens qu’on peut faire sur ce sujet”.

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the Frenchman allowed that Masaniello had grown proud. For Modène, Masaniello had been a victim. All in all, his portrait is positive: he had given “orders and regulations more useful than the wisest legislators and greatest captains would ever have been able to invent.” Masaniello had entered into the hearts of so many thousands of men who were around him, reassuring the weak, encouraging the zealous, threatening the timid, exalting the courageous, and representing in the eyes of all the horrible oppressions of their afflicted fatherland, the misery of their families, the pride and insolence of the gentlemen, the graft of the ministers, the avarice of the gabella officials, the advantages of prompt liberty and of a future abundance […]7

According to the count, the loss of Masaniello was a very hard blow to the Neapolitan cause. Notably, he does not blame it on the Spaniards alone. “Masaniello, in less than three days, was obeyed like a monarch, massacred like a rogue, and then revered like a saint.”8 Tutini and Verde, as we have seen, thought the same. Masaniello had been an instrument of God, a victim of the Spaniards and of the Neapolitan people, thanks to their yen for betrayal. Tutini and Verdi blame Masaniello’s volubility on the stars, on the astrological influence of Aries, commonly judged “instable and voluble.”9 As we have said, there is firmer ground in what they wrote about a Neapolitan “wound,” the tendency to trick others, sprung of the misery of a great swath of the population, of bad examples set, and of mistrust that things could change. The inclination, as the two authors define it, to betrayal seemed already long deep-rooted in Naples. The writers, deeply hostile to the Spaniards, as we have often noted, blamed the devices already cited here, by which in Naples one either punished or rewarded. As they write: But why were they given over to gluttony, and why did they become all of them thieves, devoted to their interests, not seeing that the life of Masaniello was also their life; but they cared about nothing but robbing. 7 Modéne, Mémoires, p. 123. 8 Ibid., p. 130. The count here is picking up on a pithy saying then making the rounds. It summed up the extraordinary career of Masaniello, his rise, fall, and second rise towards “sainthood.” The original: “Masaniello in meno di tre giorni fu obbedito come un monarca, massacrato come uno scelerato, e poi riverito come un santo.” This formula was taken up by many writings dedicated to the revolt, both travel diaries and histories of Italy; the words often reflect a dismissive attitude towards the Neapolitan plebs. 9 Tutini-Verde, Racconto della sollevatione, p. 81.

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And they had all become masters, and one could not talk to them, or advise them that their operations were not going well, rather, that they were putting them back into the hand of the Spaniards; and what they were doing was all in their own [private] interest, and not for the benefit of the public. And often those who had enemies, with a thousand falsehoods managed to stir up the will to have them killed, and, to please the Spaniards, how many betrayals did they plot against themselves and against the fatherland, hoping for wholesale rewards from them [the Spaniards], but they were later well remunerated for it. So it was that Naples became another bacchanal, everyone was in danger of death, and, in their actions they wanted to do it their own way, nor did they take care about anything.10

Rather, for these two authors: The men of the people should have taken care of Masaniello, guarded him, conserved him, and not let him have dealings with Spaniards, and when they sent him that bouquet of flowers not allow him to smell them, when they invited him to Posillipo not allow him to go, because he would not have gone mad; to feed him with substantial food, and in sum to show affection to the one who had made the bread grow, removed the gabelle, brought the city food, made all the assassins die, and [restored] justice in its place, and [they should have] managed to ward off any sinister encounter from so great a benefactor.11

Tutini and Verde wrote astutely, later, when the revolt was over. There had not been another Masaniello. They knew that. Neither Annese, nor the dottore in law Vincenzo d’Andrea, and certainly not the Duke of Guise, who came in November that year to try his luck, could do so much as he. With Masaniello it seemed that an era was over. In the years to come, however, the myth would live on, down to a time that those writers perhaps never even dreamed of, the time of the battle for liberty, not only in the kingdom of Naples, but in all the Italian states – in the Risorgimento. But what general conclusions can we draw after scanning the chronicles once more? Masaniello, it is clear, pursued the common good and knew how 10 Ibid., p. 82. 11 Ibid., p. 81.

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to work with the heads who knew most about it. They abandoned him for reasons that differed: the viceroy saw in him a dangerous capo. His excesses of his last days had caused dottore Genoino, Arpaia, and the cardinal to think that he was uncontrollable and that he could damage developments in course. All told, his fame was born from clear roots, in his intentions, in his determination, and in the fact that he seemed, as indeed was true in the first days, the only one among the capi not influenced by the viceroy and the nobles. And, moreover, the awareness of what he had suffered, the infamy and an end so pitiless and spectacular, helped make him a banner to wave, an example to remember, a voice to call up again, by all who still harboured the popular dream of a new city.

Part II A Brief History of a Myth

XIV. A Voice During the Revolt Abstract This chapter reviews the seventeenth-century fortunes of Masaniello. He is praised in encomiastic poetry and evoked in political writings aiming to incite the popular faction to combat the Spaniards. Masaniello is transformed into an anti-Spanish patriot, who counsels from beyond the grave. As the revolt continues, some men of the people are encouraged to fight to avenge his death. The Duke of Guise, French interloper who hopes in vain to rule, although he puts to death the butcher who killed Peppe Carafa, nevertheless helps Masaniello’s widow; he tries at once to court the nobles and the plebs. Keywords: seventeenth-century poetry, Popular hero, war writing, political literature

1.

The First Phase

Masaniello was honoured not only by his funeral, but also by short encomiastic poems. Donzelli remarks – as does Agostino Nicolai, a writer not of the people’s faction – these writings were “infinite in number.”1 Some of these anagrams, “epitaphs,” and short poetic texts still survive.2 They are expressions of gratitude, verses that accord Masaniello a hero’s role. In one of the anagrams written for him – “Tommaso Anello of Amalfi, Neapolitan, I have freed Naples of the soma and the dazio” – it notes that he had, indeed, freed Naples of its taxes. Viewed together, these texts bear witness to a yearning on the part of many Neapolitans not to deny Masaniello, but rather to enlist him in their battle to secure the claims that the viceroy had sworn to respect. Sometimes, the poetry raised him higher. A Latin epigraph pictures him as 1 Donzelli, Partenope liberata p. 63. The physician reports an anagram that celebrates his laudable campaign to cancel the gabelle: “Thomasi Aniello de Amalfi Napoletano / Levat’hò in fin la soma, e ’l Datio a Napoli.” 2 Nicolai, Narrazione Giornale, p. 96.

D’Alessio, S. Masaniello. The Life and Afterlife of a Neapolitan Revolutionary Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2022 doi: 10.5117/9789463721455_ch14

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stronger than Hector: To Tommaso of Amalfi, plebeian citizen of Naples / in spirit, in forces, stronger than Hector. Restorer of the fatherland and liberator of the People of Naples/ Tamer of the nobles, and triumph-bearer.3 A poem calls him not a “hero” but a “theatre [an exemplary exhibit] of heroes”: “In fame he is greater than all others/ You might say that in this man one sees a theatre of all heroes, those who were, and those who now are.”4 The author of “Parthenope, made young again by the glorious San Gennaro,”5 declares that the city, hitherto “ill” and “languishing,” has now returned to health thanks to the intervention of its guardian saint, via his use of Masaniello. The fisherman had ensured that “old men, youths, and boys” could once more enjoy the gardens of the “Italic kingdom.” This text is, we would say today, “politically correct.” It skirts the tragic end of Masaniello, who challenged both viceroy and ministers. Instead, it turns to the Duke of Arcos, praying him to place an epitaffio in the market, as a guarantee that neither he nor any who came after would ignore the conceded “graces.” Moreover, in a long poem, “Exposition on the Psalm of David concerning the Revolt of Naples,” Masaniello is remembered as a man sent by God. Indeed, he is linked to David. In the Second Psalm, the “shepherd-boy king” poses the question: “Why do the nations rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?” Then he [“David”] answers: “The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel, against the Lord, and against his anointed, saying, let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision. Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure.” [lines 2–5] God has called him: “Thou art my son; this day have I begotten thee.” [line 7] Indeed, he has called him to “break” with his rod the “nations,” as he has indeed done. And, thus, an admonition to the princes: “Be wise now therefore, O ye kings: be instructed, ye judges of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling […] Blessed are all they that put their trust in him.” [lines 10–12]6 This poetic composition 3 Anon., Anagramma. Thomae Anello Amalphio civi neapolitano plebeio, in Mondo antico in rivolta, p. 52. 4 Anon., Masaniello da un basso stato esaltato ad un sommo Imperio: “Dalla fama volante ogn’altro eccede / Si che ben si può dir, che in esso si vede un teatro d’Eroi, che furno, e sono.” This, and other compositions that I cite, with a few exceptions, appear in the manuscript collection: BNN, XIV B 37. 5 Anon., Partenope ringiovanita per il glorioso San Gennaro, ibid., ff. 114r–115v. 6 The text, found some few years back, was published in Mondo antico in rivolta, pp. 54–58.

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assimilates the revolt to the punishment the psalm’s imputed David invokes, suggesting that the viceroy could never default on his promises. Meanwhile, there were other texts, with messages varied and diverse. In some, Masaniello asserts that the people have abandoned him. One such was Mas’Aniello si lamenta col Popolo, che per tante Fatiche da lui sostenute in farli acquistar la libertà invece di mercé n’abbia ricevuto la morte [Mas’Aniello Complains to the People, on Account of the many Labours borne by him in having them acquire Liberty. Instead of Thanks, for which he Received Death]: “I hoped for other payment from you, other thanks/ Cruel, ungrateful people […].”7 Masaniello’s career is here recounted not as a reaction at God’s prompting, but as a doomed “flight”: Masaniello, as foolish Icarus. Moreover, some poems portray him as a man not sent by God, but fated to end his days in hell. Masaniello served for propaganda during the revolt that ended only in the following April, when the city surrendered to the Spaniards. A portentous first new turn came after 21 August, when viceregal forces first clashed with the people. An author, confident that Masaniello’s voice carried authority, gave it the floor, on posters, in many streets between late August and the first days of September. There the illustrious Capopopolo urged the populace to drive the Spaniards from the city and the Kingdom, and to aim for an autonomous regime, or one under papal rule: thus, he had become anti-Spanish.8 But not all texts from those days employed him. The anonymous author of the famous treatise, Il Cittadino fedele, who invited Neapolitans to shake off the Spaniards, does not even name him.9 Masaniello does, however, figure prominently in an anonymous political dialogue stemming from the circle of Henri de Lorraine, Duke of Guise, who, from November, would play a role on the Neapolitan scene. At the start of the dialogue, Anticamera di Plutone [Pluto’s Antechamber], the Duke of Osuna and the sixteenth century’s Duke of Alba confer. Osuna lambasts the conduct of Spaniards across the world, while Alba believes that peoples are governed by “trickery,” by use of “divide and conquer,” and by wielding 7 Altra paga sperai altra mercede / Da Te Patria crudel popolo ingrato. 8 For mention of this, see both F. Capecelatro, Diario, p. 228, and Tutini-Verde, Racconto della sollevatione, p. 163. The latter text relates to 10 September: the leaflets tried to convince readers that the Spaniards had no intention of respecting the clauses of agreement. For this sort of propaganda, see also Galasso, Regno di Napoli, pp. 280 ff. 9 Anon., Il Cittadino Fedele. Discorso breve della Giusta, Generosa, e Prudente Risolutione del Valoroso, e Fedelissimo Popolo di Napoli per liberarsi dall’insopportabili gravezze impostegli da Spagnuoli, in Villari, Per il re o per la patria, pp. 41-57. I have used the text to work out the likely date of publication (not long after 22 August, the election of Francesco Toralto as Capitan Generale). See D’Alessio Contagi, pp. 31 ff.

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“fire and sword” against rebels. On such maxims, the author opines, Spanish policy then was grounded. Then, the two Spaniards cede the dialogue stage to the patriots. At that, into Pluto’s antechamber steps Masaniello. He is well received by those who took part in the 1547 revolt of Naples, which strove to fend off the imposed Inquisition tribunal: conversation then turns to Naples now. The dialogue’s Masaniello at once portrays the city as a body stricken with sickness: “the ills that it suffered at the time [in 1547] could not be compared with the ones it bears today. Your century saw its langour, ours its collapse; the earlier century saw it stumble; this century sees it beaten down; that century saw its veins cut open; this century sees the blood drain out.” At last, with firm consensus that city and Kingdom should throw off the Spaniards, up comes the question: what is the best form of government? While some speakers praise the virtues of republics, others exalt, convincingly, the stability and strength of monarchies. Here, the dialogue-Masaniello plays a key role, holding that, given the hostility between the people and the nobles, only a foreign prince could stand firm in Naples.10 When, immediately afterwards, amidst suggested names, he hears Henri of Lorraine’s, he utters no word of protest. Then, in both events and propaganda, came a new turn, the bombardment by Juan of Austria (natural son of Philip IV). It began a few days after October started, when Juan arrived. The guns galvanized the city to beg the pope and Europe’s princes for help, in the Manifesto del fedelissimo popolo di Napoli [Manifesto of the most faithful People of Naples], issued on 17 October.11 In the clashes, Gennaro Annese defended the marketplace, firing from the torrione del Carmine, the great tower of the seaside fortress adjacent to the cloister complex. Soon thereafter, he was named “Generalissimo della Repubblica.” A little later, the new Capitano generale, Francesco Toralto, was put to death, accused of being too accommodating towards the viceroy. Masaniello’s friend Giovanni Bianco, mentioned earlier, opened the man’s chest, plucked out the heart, and fetched it home to his young wife, saying he did this to avenge Masaniello’s death. An author explained the reasons behind an act that risked discrediting the people: This monster, so malignant, died. The people itself saw, ripped from its chest, that heart, which desired, with lying spirits, to consort with the 10 Anon., Anticamera di Plutone, Naples, BNN, Branc. II F 7, cc. 69r–117r. A few years ago, the text was published in part, with a scholarly introduction, in Mondo antico in rivolta, pp. 71–91. 11 The Manifesto del fedelissimo popolo di Napoli apprears in Vittorio Conti, Le leggi di una rivoluzione. I bandi della repubblica napoletana dall’ottobre 1647 all’aprile 1648 (Naples: Jovene, 1983), pp. 13–16.

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solemn oaths of his tongue. It taught others to keep the faith they swear, just as the glorious example of our innocent chief will serve those people who come after, one who, sent by God, with unheard-of faithfulness brought his citizens out from under tyranny.12

Here, we have an important clue to a phenomenon that other texts let us see. If, thus far, writers had skirted mentioning Masaniello’s killing, as it cast a shadow on the Duke of Arcos, with the rupture, the death became one of several “blows” the tyrant inflicted on the city. In a long poem by Carlo Lelio Anne, Partenope offesa [Parthenope offended], we read: This is what he did, what he wrought, just as he desired The faithless Marrano, he made my Tommaso go mad. And, all luckless, by the conspirators, In the royal church of the Carmine, he was killed. Faithless rabble, I am allowed to speak thus, For, before God, they did so great a wrong. Tanto fé, tanto oprò, che come volle L’empio Marran, fè il mio Tomaso folle. E fu da congiurati l’infelice, Nella Chiesa Real del Carmin morto. Empia canaglia, così dir me lice Poiché dinanzi a Dio fer tanto torto.

At the end, the author turns to Gennaro Annese: Do not be afraid, strike hard, victory is ours. I see that you have won; such is God’s promise. Reason is on our side, as it proves. You see that, so I believe, the enterprise is just.13

12 Anon., Manifesto che palesa le sue giuste ragioni, in Villari, Per il re o per la patria, pp. 73–84. 13 Carlo Lelio Anne, Partenope offesa. Breve Racconto delli pietosi successi di Napoli composta da Carlo Lelio Anne, in BOGN, 28.3.13, ff. 253r–156v. In this text surfaces the “nationalist” spirit sometimes found in Neapolitan popular tradition. Note in this connection Michele Rak, “La tradizione letteraria popolare-dialettale napoletana tra la conquista spagnola e le rivoluzioni del 1647–48,” in Storia di Napoli, vol. IV, tome II (Cava de’ Tirreni: Arti grafiche Di Mauro, 1974), pp. 573–729. See particularly pp. 716–729, a chapter dedicated to literary texts written during the revolt.

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Non temer, pugna, la vittoria è nostra Il veggio hai vinto tel promette Iddio Abbiamo la Raggione, che ce ‘l dimostra Vedi l’impresa è giusta, sì cred’io

2.

The Double Game of the Duke of Guise

The Duke of Guise, arriving in Naples on 14 November 1647, staked out a position in the politics of Naples. Interestingly, in the many poems lauding him, nobody ever mentions Masaniello. Guise figures as the cock that scares a lion (Rodrigo Ponce de León [Lion]), or a new Moses or Alexander.14 This imagery reflects the Frenchman’s intentions when he embarked on his Neapolitan campaign, as we have already seen in Pluto’s Antechamber. Indeed, Guise hoped to be king of Naples. In his Mémoires, he says so plainly, and the “poetasters” who wrote on his behalf knew it. Thus, to take just one example, in La Sirena festante al aspettato arrivo del Serenissimo Sig. Duca di Ghisa [The Mermaid celebrating the expected Arrival of the Most Serene Duke of Guise], mermaid Parthenope greets him as follows: Welcome, Free/French hero Nor shall she, who was An unhappy slave in unyielding servitude, 14 The cock and the leon (“Leon crudel caderai / o darti devi ad un sì buon Gallo”) appear in a madriale of Gioseppo De Vito, in a miscellany of poetry about the revolt, in SNSP, XXIX E 3, f. 18. A cock figures again in the same miscellany, in a Contrasto tra sua Autezza Spagnola, e Duca d’Arcos, dedicated to Giuseppe Palumbo by Carlo Francesco Garzillo, where we see portrayed the Duke of Arcos, terrif ied by a “Rooster” [gallo: a Gaul, a Frenchman] (f. 27). In Ad Serenissimum / Henricum de Lorena […] Defensorem Libertatis, Ducem Serenissimae Regalis Reipublicae Neap(olitanae) Elegia there appears a comparison with Moses: “Incolumen Populum Moses perduxit ad aras / Henricus laetum ducit ad astra suum” (Ibid, f. 13); for Alexander, see Jacobus Grassus, Ad Serenissimum Ducem De Guisa, / Epigramma: “Magnus Alexander toto regator in orbe / Extitit invictus, proelia dura gerens” (ibid., f. 25). The Duke of Guise (1614–64), Archbishop of Reims at age fifteen, showed no interest in a church career; instead, he plunged into the Neapolitan affair, hoping to cash in on his unproven descent from the house of Anjou: Stuart Carroll, Martyrs and Murderers: The Guise Family and the Making of Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 294; for the duke’s ambitions and failures, see Aspiration, Representation and Memory: The Guise in Europe, 1506–1688, edited by Jessica Munns, Penny Richards, and Jonathan Spangler (London: Routledge, 2016); for the conflict with Cardinal Filomarino: Giuseppe Mrozeck Eliszezynski, “Tra don Giovanni d’Austria e il duca di Guisa. Alcune riflessioni sul cardinal Filomarino durante la rivolta napoletana del 1647–48,” Librosdelacorte. es, n. 18, 11 (2019), pp. 229–245.

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Bend her neck to the hand of Spain, Released by a French hand, I will enjoy peace. I recognize my king, I, ruling proud, Now that I am free, am pleased to serve. Ben venga il Franco Eroe né più quale era Misera schiava in servitù tenace, Piegare la cervice à destra Iibera sciolta da Franca man godrò la Pace Riconosco il mio Re, regnando altera Hor che libera son servir mi piace.

Reading the Mémoires, one learns yet more. Guise was deeply scornful of what he calls the “race” of the “Masaniellos” and the “Annesi.” Time and again, he writes, he was furious at how the lazzari turned to him, little reckoning that they were not dealing with their equal.15 Then, to convince the nobles that he had not come to Naples to further Masaniello’s campaign, he put to death Michele de Santis, the butcher who killed Peppe Carafa. “To begin with,” he said to the nobles, “I have put in irons Michele de Santis, who killed so cruelly poor Don Pepe Carafa. I want to sacrifice him to you, and to all your kin, and before six days shall pass, you will see his head atop a column at the Aversa gate, and his body hung by one foot from a tree on the highway. These are the signs that I want to give you, of my credit, and of my power, and also of the friendship I bear to the nobility, and of my design to seek all means to make myself loved.”

This blunt act did not persuade the nobles of his trustworthiness. Moreover, Guise had to be both attentive to and solicitous of the common folk. As Christmas neared, he writes, he had an idea: 15 To give just one example: after the arrest in Loreto (a sea-side quarter just east of the Carmine), of a capo di popolo who had failed to respect Francesco Arpaia, many men went to Guise, who tells the story. They “made a great ruckus in my great hall, saying that they wanted to see me.” He shouted at them “that this was no way to obtain my graces.” And, he writes, he told them “this proceeding was just fine with Masaniello, and with Gennaro,” but he was “neither of the mood, nor of station, to put up with it.” Enrico di Lorena (Henri de Lorraine), Duke of Guise, Le memorie del fu signor duca di Guisa (Cologne: P. della Piazza, 1675), vol. II, p. 86 and pp. 100–101. The original French version, later republished, first came out in Paris in 1668 as Les memoires de feu Monsieur le Duc de Guise. There is no English translation.

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I thought it politic to keep the memory of Masaniello in some way alive, as he had laid the first foundations for the liberty of Naples. Giving orders to seek out his widow, who was in dire straits, I took especial pains to help her, as I continued to, down to the day of my imprisonment, something that pleased the people greatly.16

Guise’s double game seems to have stirred substantial discontent, as proved by some texts that give Masaniello the floor and fail to mention Guise. In Ragionamento di Tomaso Aniello Generalissimo per eccitare il suo Popolo Napoletano alla libertà [Discourse of Generalissimo Tommaso Aniello to stir his Neapolitan People to Liberty], “Tomaso Aniello” from the Afterlife exhorts the Neapolitans to battle to drive the Spanish tyrant from the fatherland.17 In the “ode” by Agustino Tobbia Granatezza, Masaniello trionfante [Masaniello in Triumph] (published in Naples in 1648), he is in the Elysian Fields;18 the Duke of Arcos, envious of his fate, wishes to disturb him; so, escorted by three malignant creatures, the duke approaches him, to make him believe Naples is in danger. Discovering that it is the viceroy who addresses him, Masaniello heaps reproaches on him. Shoes of string, cursed soul Tobacco, and radishes, an elk with horns, He comes to the Elysian fields wrapped in disguises And then he skips and hops about.19 Scarpe de fonecelle, arma mmardetta, Tabacco, e rafanielle, arce cornuto. Viene à li Campe Alisie stravestuto Pemme fa n’ancarella, e na sgammetta 16 Di Lorena, Memorie, vol. I, p. 277. See also Vincenzo Maria Capece, L’état de la republique de Naples sous le gouvernement de monsieur le duc de Guise, translated from the Italian by M.le Marie Turge-Loredan (Paris: Chez F. Leonard, 1679), p. 71. 17 Anon., Ragionamento di Tomaso Aniello Generalissimo per eccitare il suo Popolo Napoletano alla libertà, in Villari, Per il re o per la patria, pp. 69–70. 18 The play of Augustino Tobbia Granatezza, Masaniello trionfante. Oda in Dialoghi (Naples: 1648), dedicated to A. de Lieto, Captain of the Guard of the Duke of Guise (and not to the duke himself), appears in Masaniello nella drammaturgia europea, pp. 106–110. On this text, see the notes of Roberto de Simone, Il lamento di Marinetta e l’Oda per Masaniello trionfante. Riferimenti formali etnici e musicali, pp. 306–311, which trace the oda’s origins to a Spanish genre of autos [acts, deeds]. 19 The dialect used here is an artifical confection that surely looks to the Neapolitan baroque poet Giulio Cesare Cortese, as is propounded by De Simone, Il lamento di Marinetta e l’oda per Masaniello trionfante, pp. 306–311.

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In the end, his lazzaro lads announce in mock Spanish that he is dead. Triccopetricco you are at the hospital Captain Matador you are dead. A lo Spetale staie Triccopetricco Capitan Matador muerto è vuostè.

And they affirm that the kingdom will soon be free (“The Marranos [JewSpaniards] have been chased away/ we mean Medina and Monterrey/ they have lost this kingdom, alay alay”).20

3.

Woe betide the Vanquished

But the kingdom was never freed, and naturally, given the presence of the lazzari in the military and in the “literature” that backed the revolt, the victors vented their anger on them. Moreover, the underclass swiftly understood what was about to happen: it was for them a black day when the count of Oñate entered the city. The armed lazzari were in such great confusion at the entry of His Highness, and by the acclamation, “Viva the King of Spain,” that, from being the Hyrcanian tigers that first they seemed, confused and tamed they disarmed, and cowed, in an instant, by their failure they retired into their houses, just as on 7 July 1647 the nobility and people of high estate did, but with a different outcome, because the start was begun in a bloody fashion, and the end was ordered peacefully by these people, to bring tranquility and quiet to the fatherland and to the Kingdom.21

At the same time, some poets warned them: The jig is up, and the French coins too.22 Naples wants nothing French 20 “So ghiute ssì cacciuottole marrane; / Pe ’ntennere Medina, e Monterrè / Hanno perzo stò regno, allè, allè.” 21 Ibid., pp. 468–469. 22 The “tornese” circulating in Naples took its name from a coin widely known in Europe but originally minted at medieval Tours.

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For never in this land have lilies bloomed. Hear the excommunications, hear the decrees. You are held to restitution.23 Sso fornute li spasse, e li tornise Napole non ne vo’ proprio Franzise Ca à sto Terreno maie giglie so schiuse Sentite le scommuneche, e lo Banno Site tenute a’ restituzione […].

In a long Invettiva di Masaniello [Invective of Masaniello],24 notably, Masaniello stands accused – he has now become and long would remain a symbol of the lazzari: “you stir up war, and you are a poor fellow born to work on ships and boats.” The author goes on to warn him: “You will find yourself slaughtered and / dragged like a mad dog around the squares / only on account of your mad and thieving desires.” Nor after death would he find peace. Indeed, he would end in hell, finding: …snow and burning fire, Boiling sulphur, black smoke, horror, Hunger, thirst, the racket of teeth Wailing, and many other things shall suffer Those who remain inside these lakes From which they will never hope to depart. Ah, how much more bitter are those pains Hearing the rustling of chains…25 […] e nevi e fuoco ardente, solfo bollente, fumo tetro, orrore, Fame, sete, stridore delli denti Pianto e molti altri stenti patiranno Quelli che dentro stanno in questi lai Donde speranza mai havran d’uscire.

23 Anon., Delli Lazzari, Naples, BNN, XIV B 37, ff. 123r–v. 24 Anon., Invettiva contro Masaniello, in Vincenti, Gli uccisori di Masaniello, p. 64. 25 Ibid., p. 82. This poetic text probably has its model in sermons. It uses the conceptual apparatus of public preaching. See Elisa Novi Chavarria, Il governo delle anime. Azione pastorale, predicazione e missioni nel Mezzogiorno d’Italia: secoli 16–18 (Naples: ESI, 2001), p. 260.

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Ahi che più amare sono quelle pene Sentendo di catene lo bisbiglio […].

The composition aimed to induce the last of the lazzari not only to give up their arms, but also to abandon the “memory of Masaniello,” which seemed a powerful, dangerous example. The wicked memory of Masaniello, May it remain buried and extinguished in the tomb. If the citizen remembers it It will be with head bent down to earth. He will no longer make war, and will remain in peace. la ria memoria di Masaniello Resti in l’avello seppellita e spenta se di ciò si rammenta il cittadino starà col capo chino a terra Non farà più guerra e starà in pace.

Soon after, the Count of Oñate began to punish “rebels” with the death penalty. Among the names of those put to death, in the register of the Bianchi, the friars who comforted the condemned, published by De Blasiis,26 we come upon one Agostino Romano, “Neapolitan of perhaps twenty-one years,” mercer by trade, having confessed under torture to the crime of “desiring to kill the Black Capes [cappe negre] because they were shouting Viva Spain”; Domenico Romano, “Neapolitan, mercer, brother of the aforesaid, about twenty-two years old”; Antonio Fonzeca, “Neapolitan, constable, age twenty-three”; Antonio Mosca, “Neapolitan, of about twenty-five years […] seller of necklaces and earrings” (They were put to death on 27 April); Lello Fiomara, “Neapolitan of twenty-one years […] for the ill-wrought republic and for sodomy” (9 May); Giuseppe Sorrentino (Cannicchio), was also twenty-seven, and was a “fruit shopkeeper” (both were decapitated on 22 June, alongside Gennaro Annese); Carlo Feroce, “fisherman aged twenty-eight”; Giovan Battista Palombo, “for the crime of lèse majesté […] a 26 Giuseppe de Blasiis, “Le Giustizie eseguite in Napoli,” Archivio storico per le province napoletane, IX, fasc. I (1884): 104–154; see also Antonella Oref ice, “I giustiziati di Napoli dal 1556 al 1862,” with a preface by Antonio Illibato, Nuovo Monitore Napoletano (Naples, D’Auria, 2015), pp. 107 ff. This later catalogue of the executed sometimes differs from the lists edited by de Blasiis.

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tailor of about forty years”; Francesco Malizia, “gardener, about thirty-eight years old”; Francesco Castellano, “sailor from Chiaia” (3 August, 1648); and many others, among them a captain of the lazzari, Domenico Amendola from Amalfi, about twenty-two years old, “standard-bearer of Capitano Fiore, captain of the lazzari, for having attempted rebellion” (5 August 1649). Assorted poets could not resist the temptation to praise the Count of Oñate as the just viceroy, who had dried Parthenope’s tears (however far from the truth this was). In All’Eccellenza del Signor Conte d’Oñate, Viceré di Napoli [To his Excellency the Señor Count of Oñate, Viceroy of Naples], of Giuseppe Battista, one reads: Just as back in time when the Rhadamanths ruled [in Crete] Arrives with no less praise Inigo [de Oñate] to the heights and having given support to Parthenope wipes the tears from her moist cheeks…27 Di quanto opraro un tempo i Radamanti Giunge con pari loda Innico al segno e fatto di Partenope sostegno, all’umide sue gote asciuga pianti […].

The allegory of sad Naples personified appears elsewhere. For example, in Masaniello d’Amalfi, vil pescatore, fatto capo della plebe sediziosa nelle rivoluzioni di Napoli, sotto li 7 di luglio 1647 [Masaniello d’Amalfi, lowly Fisherman, made Head of the seditious Commoners in the Revolutions of Naples, on the 7 July, 1647], by Antonio de’ Rossi: And, now foreseeing even worse disasters on sorrowful sands, in brown raiment, seated, She drenches her gentle lap with tears…28 E di più fieri scempi ormai presaga, su meste arene, in bruna spoglia assisa, il suo grembo gentil di pianto allaga […]. 27 Poesie meliche (Venice, 1653). These and other lyrics cited below appear in Tre catastrofi: Eruzioni, rivolta e peste nella poesia del Seicento napoletano, edited by Giancarlo Alfano, Marcello Barbato, and Andrea Mazzucchi (Naples: Cronopio, 2000), pp. 104 ff. 28 Sonetti (Naples, 1661), in Tre catastrofi, p. 11.

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And, in Per le rivolture popolari di Napoli nell’anno 1647, by Giacomo Lubrano: My Mermaid sang Among storms of trickery, For many slave convicts Reigned like tyrants.29 Pianse la mia Sirena Tra tempeste di inganni, che più schiavi di pena regnasser da tiranni […].

4. Meanwhile, at Venice In other cities too, Masaniello fared poorly, first at Venice, where Giraffi’s Le Rivolutioni di Napoli was published. There surfaced a “delirious Masaniello,” like the one featured in the Capricci rettorici (1649) of Gioseffo Mantegna,30 where he consorts with “languid Seneca,” “indecisive Paris,” and other famous men and heroes. There, in Masaniello’s monologue, we hear the words that the author had used to define his “ardour.” “The world is a bourne too narrow for the vastness of my thoughts, and my unexpected glories scorn it. Having overstepped the limits of Fame, I have arrived at the impossible. No one should usurp my honour once I am deprived of life, if I come to kill myself.”31 Most likely in Mantegna’s wake, Masaniello was welcomed into other literary galleries of notables. Baldassare Bonifacio inserted him into his Ludrica Historia (Venice, 1652)32 alongside Arsaces King of Parthia, Tamerlane, and Marius, men “of humble estate and obscure birth, and the filth of servile trades, who arose to renown of name, and the highest peak of honour, by way of sedition and riot, or through theft and brigandage” – famous by accident, these were men of humble origin, snatched from anonymity not by virtue 29 Scintille poetiche (Naples: 1690), in Tre catastrofi, pp. 119–123. 30 Gioseffo Mantegna, Capricci rettorici (Venice: G. Herz, 1649), pp. 134–164. For the dependence of this text on Giraffi, see D’Alessio, “Ordo naturalis e infrazione. Per una metaforologia della rivolta masanielliana,” Filosofia politica, 2 (1998): 249–280. 31 Ibid., p. 145. 32 Baldassarre Bonifacio, Ludicra Historia. Opus ex omni disciplinarum genere selecta, ac iucunda eruditione refertum (Venice: Apud Paulum Baleonium, 1652); Giorgio Fulco noted this text in his Fortuna letteraria, pp. 42–47.

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but by vices. Ranged side by side, they presented a Laughable History, a sorry panorama set against the grave historiae of true and proper heroes.33 Meanwhile, some writers, if fewer, continued to remember Masaniello as a man who had achieved extraordinary things – as did Salvator Rosa, who, in his satire, La Guerra, remarked that, though of “vile” condition, he had laid out “the rules to kings.”34 Or like Francesco Melosio, author of Lamento di Marinetta, who broadcast the grief of Masaniello’s widow for the loss of her man, who had desired his country’s good.35 But these were a minority.

5.

The Plague and the Anti-Christ

Other negative accounts surfaced after the great 1656 Plague. They arose because people thought, and said, that the epidemic was a punishment for the rising.36 In his Teatro eroico e politico dei vicerè di Napoli, Domenic’Antonio Parrino laid out a detailed revision of events: It is a sure thing that a certain Masone, who, in the tumults of the year 1647 was officer of the people, returned to the Kingdom with that ship, and, at once falling ill, he was brought to the Hospital of the Santissima Annunziata, where after three days he died of the pox. That was all that was needed to infect Naples with the contagion; for, stricken with 33 In this tradition of joking denigration, see also Giovanni Francesco Loredan, Il cimiterio. Epitaffi giocosi Centurie quattro, in L’Iliade Giocosa (Venice: H. Gilet, 1654). Gino Benzoni cited Loredan’s harsh words about Masaniello: “The way in which Masaniello is treated is a significant test of the culture’s identification with fear and with the fierce spirit of vendetta of a debauched nobility,” in his Gli affanni della cultura. Intellettuali e potere nell’Italia della Controriforma e barocca (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1978), pp. 131 ff. 34 Salvator Rosa, La Guerra, in Poesia del Seicento, edited by Carlo Muscetta and Pier Paolo Ferrante (Turin: Einaudi, 1964), pp. 1857–1859. 35 The text appears in Masaniello nella drammaturgia europea, pp. 99–100. Note, there, the valuable introduction to the text by Roberto de Simone, pp. 306 ff. 36 See among other works, Andrea Rubino, “Notitia di quanto è occorso in Napoli dal 1648 per tutto l’anno 1657 scritta dal dottor A. R.,” Archivio storico per le province napoletane, XIX, 1894: 696–709, at p. 697; on this author, a priest at the church of San Paolo dei Teatini, see Ida Mauro, Spazio urbano e rappresentazione del potere, pp. 26 ff.; Giulia Calvi, “L’oro, il fuoco, le forche: la peste napoletana del 1656,” Archivio storico italiano, CXXXIX, n. 3 (1981): 405–458; Galasso, Il Regno di Napoli, pp. 571–579; Idamaria Fusco, Peste, demografia e fiscalità nel Regno di Napoli del XVII secolo (Naples: Guida, 2007) (one of the first of her several works on the topic); my “On the Plague in Naples, 1656: Expedients and Remedies,” in Disaster Narratives in Early Modern Naples, pp. 187–204.

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a vertigo, Carlo di Fatio, who worked at the hospital, twenty-four hours later breathed out his soul at his house, which was in the in Vico del Pero or in Vico Rotto in Lavinaio […] So, in no time at all, many in the lower quarters of the city were laid low by sickness, especially those in the Lavinaio, Mercato, Porta di Calce, and Armieri.37

So, this plague was brought by a certain Masone, officer in the tumults of 1647! If, indeed, Neapolitans later accused the Spaniards, they did so only, says the writer, because some trouble-makers had striven to exploit the plague to instigate the people: There were ten or twelve, already guilty of the popular tumults of 1647, who, returning to Naples laden with their old perfidy, took advantage of the first signs of pestilence to stir up a new popular sedition. To this end, blaming the government as the source of these illnesses, they attributed it to some poisonous paupers who deliberately had it sown about to exterminate the common folk, and thus take their vengeance for the past revolutions, without breaking the conditions of their pardon. It was not hard for them to persuade their companions, giving as warranty that the upper quarters of the city were not infected with contagion, nor were the Fortresses manned by the Spanish garrison, but only the districts of Lavinaio, Conceria, and Mercato, and other quarters around there, mostly inhabited by folk of the lesser sort.

Because, at that time, there was much talk about the revolt, some authors labelled Masaniello as the Antichrist, whose arrival was aired in religious writings (Carlo Francesco Riaco defined him that way in his Il giudicio di Napoli, 1658).38 Stefano Pepe dedicated one of his Quaresimali (1658) to Masaniello, but without mentioning his name, which was cursed, and obliterated. The friar portrayed him as an ugly creature, to be driven off like the devil. “As his soul was naked of any virtue, so also was his body: a 37 Parrino, Teatro eroico e politico, vol. III, pp. 33–47: a conf irmation of the opinions that questioned the revolt of 1647 appears in the anonymous Relazione della pestilenza accaduta in Napoli l’anno 1656, edited by Giuseppe de Blasiis in Archivio storico per le Province Napoletane, I (1876): 323–357: “Amidst that atrocious spectacle of misery and death seethed the turbulent humours that had provoked the tumults of 1647. The plague, almost as if led by an invisible hand, desolated those places that had been the nest of the rebellion.” 38 Carlo Francesco Riaco, Il giudicio di Napoli. Discorso del Passato Contagio rassomigliato al Giudicio Universale (Perugia: P. di Tommasio, 1658). For the figura of the Antichrist and its political uses, see Gennaro Barbuto, Il principe e l’Anticristo (Naples: Guida, 1994), pp. 250–251.

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badly torn cloak covered him, but it stretched downwards to his knee, his feet were bare, and he had no other cover except mud, on his head with linen hat. But so muddy and disgusting were his clothes […] that, like his feet, his body seemed manured.” That it was, indeed, Masaniello he was writing about is patent in the stages of his rhetorical ascent. “Fortuna made an enormous effort, to raise him up from so far below. He could not have been lower, and it could not have raised him higher in a few short hours. With the very same heraldry of his ignoble life, the fetid Emperor began to lay down laws, to command armies, to be the arbiter of things.” And, at the end, Pepe addresses him directly: Already the trumpet is set to call you: already a squad of Tartars readies an attack, and you, do you think how you have to smash the granaries to put the grain back in, and invite your soul to enjoy future wealth? A river of fire, or rather a conflagration roars, awaiting you for eternal roasting; the impatient devil, night and day, trembles to have you, and do you polish your loves with a mirror; do you plot to multiply that gold through usury; and you summon, with every office of the mint, the office that you aim to occupy?39

It is clear that, after the plague the forces coming into play, so eager to “tame” the common people, eagerly engaged the Masaniello myth.

39 Stefano Pepe, Quaresimale (Venice: F. Storti, 1658), p. 385. Musi has analysed Pepe’s text in more detail than here, stressing the accusations laid against Masaniello (small physique, full of desire and yet impotent), in a rich dscription of the religious orders during these days: see Aurelio Musi, “Chiesa, religione, dimensione del sacro nella rivolta napoletana del 1647–’48,” in Dimenticare Croce? Studi e orientamenti di storia del Mezzogiorno, edited by Musi (Naples: ESI, 1991), pp. 43–72. Plague and detraction were final blows to the people and their chief, who were already suffering: “The hero Antichrist appears in agony along with his people”: see the work of De Maio, Pittura e controriforma, pp. 157–158.

XV. European Stage Plays Abstract This chapter describes seventeenth century plays about the revolt. It ranges across scripts by the Englishman known as T.B., by the Netherlander Thomas Asselijn, and by the German Christian Weise, each adapting the story to his ends. In such works, we can speak of a ‘Giraffi effect’, given the influence of the account most often translated, and read, in Europe. It surfaces in the extraordinary dialogue in the Afterlife, between William Tell and the Neapolitan capopopolo, by David Faßmann. Keywords: historical plays, Christian Weise, James Howell, political literature, William Tell, dialogues between dead men

1.

In England

The Masaniello affair swiftly crossed the peninsula’s frontier. The sole vessel, almost entirely, to carry its repute was Giraffi’s Le rivolutioni di Napoli, translated into several languages.1 In England, the event made a strong impression.2 For transparently political reasons, the English were 1 Alessandro Giraffi, Kurtze warhaffte Beschreibung Deß gefährlichen weitaußsehenden und annoch währenden Auffstands So sich das verwichene 1647… Napoli angesponnen… ([no city, no printer] 1648); An exact Historie of the late Revolutions in Naples, and their monstrous successes […] in London, by R.A. for R. Lowndes, 1650 and in London, by J.G. for John Williams, 1650; with The second part of Massaniello his body taken out of the town-ditch, and solemnly buried, with epitaphs upon him. A continuation of the tumult; the D. of Guise made generalissimo, taken prisoner by young Don John of Austria, London, for A. Roper, and T. Dring, 1663: re-published in London, in 1664, in 1679); Het Eerste Deel Der Napelsche Beroerte Met de wonderlijcke Op- en Onder-gangh van Mas’Aniello. Uyt het Italiaensch Vertaelt door L.v.B. (Amsterdam: Nicolaeus van Ravesteyen, 1650), and Wonderlijcken Op, ende Ondergang van Tomaso Anello, Met de beroerten tot Neapolis. In het Italiaens beschreven door den Heer Alexander Giraffi, Vertaelt door I.V.C. (Haarlem: Vincent Casteleyn, 1650). Both books were republished in 1652, and in 1657. 2 The Neapolitan revolt and subsequent decapitation of Charles I had a huge impact on public opinion. See John Robertson, The Case for the Enlightenment: Scotland and Naples 1680–1760 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 62.

D’Alessio, S. Masaniello. The Life and Afterlife of a Neapolitan Revolutionary Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2022 doi: 10.5117/9789463721455_ch15

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quick to talk of the Capopopolo. The Royalists wielded his story against the Parliamentary party as a warning, once Charles I had been beheaded.3 Even before the English translation came out, by James Howell, a royalist writer, there appeared a “tragicomedy” by one “T.B.”: The Rebellion of Naples or the Tragedy of Massenello (1649).4 It was at once obvious that this title’s Tragedy was utterly ironic. The reader encounters a play with a happy ending: a tragedy, strictly speaking, for Masaniello only. Let us look closely at what happens in the play. In the first act, the young man wants to free his people from the many gabelle that grind them down. Then he shifts ground, under the sway of Genoino, who persuades him, rather than pursue the common good, to enrich himself instead. The Capopopolo’s conversion is swift. In the first scenes of Act II, dottore Genoino seeks him out at home, to reprove him: Sir, I must tell you here, in the presence of your Mother, your Wife, and Daughters here likewise, that you are much to be blamed; you have committed more goods and monies-worth unto the fire, out of mere vain-glory and ostentation, then would have made you the wealthiest man in the whole Kingdom of Naples, and so consequently the wisest, the greatest, the best, the noblest of all the Neapolitans (Act II, scene 2)5

3 The Masaniello affair was for royalist polemic a gift: D’Alessio, “Masaniello’s Revolt: a ‘Remedy’ for the English Body Politic,” Restoration & Eighteenth Century Theatre Research, 17, n. 1–2, (summer 2002): 9–19; Angela de Benedictis, “Miti, prototipi, enigmi e ribellioni, e lezioni della storia,” Storicamente. Laboratorio di storia, 15 n. 1 (Dec. 2019): 1–28. Also, the anti-royal party tracked the events of the revolt with trepidation: see Davide Boerio, “‘The ‘Trouble of Naples’ in the Political Information Arena of the English Revolution,” in News Networks in Early Modern Europe, edited by Joad Raymond and Noah Moxham (Leiden: Brill, 2016), pp. 779–804. 4 T.B., The Rebellion of Naples or The Tragedy of Massenello, has been republished in the rich work by Mario Melchionda, Drammi masanielliani nell’Inghilterra del Seicento (Florence: Olschki, 1988); T.B. may have been one of Howell’s correspondents, as suggested by the “T.B.,” a “merchant in Seville,” addressee of the letter of 3 May, 1633 in Howell, Familiar Letters, partly Philosophical, Political, Historical (London: St. Paul’s Church Yard, 1655), II, p. 8. T.B. seems to have used the English translation of Giraffi, by James Howell, An Exact historie of the late Revolutions in Naples: and of their monstrous successes…, by J.H. Esq.r, London, 1650. Although imprisoned, for politics or for his debts, Howell “produced many royalist tracts, giving his views on the causes of the war, the just powers and prerogatives of the king”: Paul Seaward, “A Restoration Publicist: James Howell and the Earl of Clarendon, 1661–6,” Historical Research, vol. 61, Issue 144 (1988): 123–131; Michael Nutkiewicz, “A rapporteur of the English Civil War: The Courtly Politics of James Howell (1594? –1666),” Canadian Journal of History/Annales canadiennes d’histoire, XXV (April 1990): 21-40; Dale B. J. Randall, Winter fruit: English Drama, 1642–1660 (Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 1995), p. 57; D’Alessio, Contagi, pp. 116 ff., where I treat at greater length T.B.’s play. 5 Melchionda, Drammi masanielliani, p. 74.

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This speech, although it invites him to betray the people, stirs not the slightest reproof: Masaniello’s family, too, is ethically derelict. Picking up what Genoino has just said, the mother recounts how the viceroy’s wife had come to beg the hand of one of his two daughters, for her son. Masaniello and the viceroy would then be kinsmen. Masaniello’s wife (Agata) finds this proposal neither shifty nor immoral, and nobody else objects. Rather, they fall to discussing which daughter to pick: Flora (born of Masaniello’s late first wife), or Agata’s own Ursula? The Capopopolo leans towards Flora; his wife opts, naturally, for her own girl. They quarrel, then come to blows, and Masaniello soon literally “breaks the neck” (so says the script) of his wife. (This scene may have looked to the puppet shows, where Pulcinella readily dealt out blows).6 Then, unexpectedly, the viceroy’s son turns up. Stumbling onto this death scene, frightened he embraces Flora, the only family member to show delicacy. Even in a desert some flowers do bloom, T.B. seems to wish to say. But before the reader is given the chance to expect love to blossom, Ursula, jealous of her half-sister, poisons her. After Flora, Masaniello’s mother then also dies, having accidentally ingested the very poison that doomed her granddaughter. So, in a trice, two more coffins sally from this true house of horror, home to the Capopopolo. Masaniello, all this done, acts ever more the despot. T.B. then adapts sundry episodes from Giraffi’s final pages, among them the baker thrust into his oven. In the play, this episode serves to broadcast Masaniello’s tyranny. “Most excellent, and thrice worthy Tomaso, we are come to complain of the great injury we suffer by the most unconscionable Bakers, who contrary to all right and honesty, have presum’d to bake such loaves as these.” Tomaso, responds with a grisly “eye for an eye” punishment: “carry these men (you I say) unto their own Ovens mouths and let their Ovens be heated hot, and put them in, and there let them be bak’d themselves; which will be a terrour to all Bakers, how they bake light bread.” (act III, scene 1). “How long shall they remain there?” the citizens ask, as if assistant cooks. He answers: “No longer, but until you see them over of a crust, and their eies look like parch’d plumbs upon a plumb cake [perhaps a leaden pun on plum cake] and then it’s time to take them forth.” 6 For this, see Walter Wallace, “Masaniello e il folklore della violenza politica,” Comunità, 193–194 (1992): 191–218. But, in a portrait of Masaniello that accompanies the English translation of Giraffi, he looks a bit like Pulcinella, with large belly and big nose. Masaniello and Pulcinella are associated in the cunto di Masaniello: “A lu tiempo de ati gabelle / Masaniello è Pullecenella / si è rimasto cu’ ’a capa rinto / ’ll’ate rirono aret’e quinte” [At the time of other gabelle/ Masaniello and Pulcinella / stayed with their head inside/ the others laughed behind the stage]. For this text, see Elvio Porta and Armando Pugliese, “Masaniello,” Sipario, 343 (1974): 56–77.

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Masaniello plays with human lives; he has lost all self-control. Here surface once more, barely changed, the associations and images Giraffi used to represent Masaniello’s “megalomania”: “Me thinks that presumptuous boy began to talke of articles, doe they thinke the Ile be confined to articles? The sun may be confin’d in a circle: but Tomaso cannot, will not bee confin’d.” (Act V, scene 2).7 To make his death seem a liberation, T.B. ends by urging kings not to provoke the people’s wrath, but also warns the readers against the fate that awaits those who lead revolts. It is likely that both this Tragicomedy, and the translation of Giraffi’s work stirred fair curiosity about Naples and the revolt. To quench it, the years that followed saw assorted writings of an informative cast: the second part of the story of the revolt (A History of the Late Revolutions in the Kingdom of Naples, 1652);8 an anthology of assorted texts called Parthenopoeia (including Scipione Mazzella’s Descrizione del Regno di Napoli, rendered as The history of the most noble and renowned kingdom of Naples with the dominions therunto annexed and the lives of all their kings, plus some chapters by James Howell).9 In these new publications, thanks to overblown ambition, the Capopopolo again goes mad. “He would be more than the Heavens, who though of such infinit vastnes yet keep themselves within their due circumference; the glorious Sun confines it self to the Ecliptie. But nothing could bound the vast desires of this Fisherman.”10 At the same time, royalist propaganda set the spectre of Masaniello to good use against the Parliamentary “Rebellion” then in course. Indeed, coins were struck with on one side, Cromwell, and on the other, Masaniello. The inscriptions read – on the obverse: Cromwellus Victor perduellis [Cromwell traitorous victor], on the reverse Massanello 7 T.B., Rebellion of Naples, p. 113. This passage elaborates Giraff i, Le rivolutioni di Napoli, pp. 173–174. Perhaps, however, T.B. also knew Marlowe’s Tamerlane: “I will persist, terror to the world / Making the meteors (that, like armed men, / Are seen to march upon the towers of heaven) / Run tilting round about the firmament, / and break their burning lances in the air […].” (Part II, Act IV, scene 1). 8 In his f irst pages, Howell sums up the story, stressing how onerous were the gabelle on fruit; “The Gabell of Fruit […] newly impos’d upon the most faithfull people of Naples, was insupportable.” As for Masaniello, he only highlights useful points of interest of his story: we are far from a solid rehabilitation: Giraffi, An exacte historie of the late Revolutions in Naples and of their monstrous successes, not to be parallel’d by any ancient or modern history, in Giraffi, A History of the late Revolutions in the Kingdom of Naples, translated by James Howell, in the edition of Vittorio Conti (Florence: CET, 1987), p. 21. 9 The texts appeared in Parthenopoeia. The first Part by that Famous Antiquary Scipio Mazzella made English by Mr. Samson Lennard, Herald of Armes. The second Part Compil’d by James Howell Esq; (London: Printed for Humphrey Moseley, 1654). 10 Mazzella-Lennard-Howell, Parthenopoeia, p. 51.

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vanus es rebellis [Masaniello, you are a futile rebel]. The two men were linked as “tyrant-rebels” in James Heath’s Flagellum: or the life and death of Cromwell, published in 1663, a few years after the Lord Protector died (1658) and the monarchy returned (1660).11

2.

In the American Colonies

Masaniello was also used in the American colonies to strike at “rebels,” as Lovejoy showed in his The Glorious Revolution in America.12 He noted that, in the seventeenth century, in a culture that condemned revolts when they did not come from the whole people, Masaniello stumbled. Leaders of his ilk were generally considered “wicked, crafty and ambitious men” who hoped to stir the people up “for selfish reasons on pretense of establishing better government and more liberty.” Masaniello, cited ever and again, became “the epitome of wrong-headed aggression,” for people of the lowest sort, scum incapable of grasping the risks they ran. Accordingly, rebellion was a wicked and criminal act.13 Thus, the leaders of New York’s and Maryland’s revolts against colonial vestiges of the Stuart regime were called “Masaniellos.” Jacob Leisler and John Coode were in fact not at all of the Capopopolo’s condition: the first was a rich New York merchant married into an influential Dutch family, the second a landholder who sat on Maryland’s General Assembly. Still, “Masaniello” served to tar their revolts as “constitutionally reprehensible.”14 Even though, in England, some few did call the leader of the people a godsend (but did so, not by chance, only after a visit to Naples),15 Masaniello 11 It is very interesting that Masaniello receives a portrait, not long after Cromwell and before Mazarin, in Nathaniel Wanley, The wonders of the little world, or, a general history of men in six books, wherein by many thousands of examples is shewed what man hath been from the first ages of the world to these times, in respect of his body, senses, passions, affections, his virtues and perfections, his vices and defects, his quality, vocation and profession, and many other particulars not reducible to any of the former heads (London: T. Basset et al., 1673), ch. VII. 12 David S. Lovejoy, The Glorious Revolution in America (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1987), pp. 294 ff. 13 Ibid., p. 297. 14 Masaniello is also mentioned as someone who can threaten the sovereign if his power is not well-founded, during the American revolution, in the pamphlet Essay Upon Government Adopted by the Americans, wherein, the Lawfulness of Revolutions are demonstrated (Philadelphia, 1775), quoted by Thomas N. Ingersoll, The Loyalist Problem in Revolutionary New England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), p. 71; I thank Geoffrey Parker for this reference. 15 Richard Lassels, The voyage of Italy or a compleat Journey through Italy, in two parts (London: R.C.F.R and A.C, 1685); for an Italian translation of the Neapolitan passages, see Viaggiatori

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long remained an icon of the vainglorious, untrustworthy people’s leader. For proof, see the long play, The History of the Rise and Fall of Masaniello, in Two Parts (1699–1770); its author was the prolific Thomas D’Urfey, a writer once close to the late Charles II, son of the king decapitated at Whitehall.16 D’Urfey doubtless used T.B.’s Rebellion of Naples as a model.17 The revolt did have its roots, but Masaniello’s stab at rising – in the play he falls in love with the wife of the Duke of Maddaloni – is viewed with horror. Frequent asides appeal to the reader’s complicity with the author, against rough social climbers who seize the Stage of History.

3.

The United Provinces

Le rivolutioni di Napoli also arrived in the United Provinces. It was translated and published by Vincent Castelijn under the title, Wonderlijcken Op, ende Ondergang, van Tomaso Aniello, Met de beroerten tot Neapolis [The Miraculous Rise and Fall of Tomaso Aniello, With the Tumults at Naples] (Haarlem, 1650 and 1652) and by Lambert van den Bos, as Het eerste deel der Napelsche Beroerte, met de wonderlijke Op- en Ondergangh van Mas’Aniello [The first part of the Neapolitan Tumults, with the Miraculous Rise and Fall of Mas’Aniello], Amsterdam, also 1650). On one of the first pages of the Castelijn edition, these verses show a rather hostile stance: Anello, urged on by vapour of desire for power and by the people’s wrath, scaled the height of arrogance, slaughter, and fires. He made himself head of state, was honoured like a prince. He governed with violence, and set up a school of atrocities, So long as he lasted: in the end, he died a tyrant’s death.18 britannici a Napoli dal ’500 al ’600, edited by Giovanni Capuano (Salerno: Laveglia, 1994), pp. 95–104. 16 Thomas D’Urfey, The Famous History of the Rise and Fall of Massaniello, in Two Parts (London: J. Nutt, 1700); for D’Urfey’s connections to Charles II, see Robert D. Hume, The Development of the English Drama (Oxford: Clarendon, 1976), pp. 456 ff. 17 As Melchionda notes, there are many places in the work where the links with T.B.’s drama are clear: “non solo conosceva bene il vecchio dramma, ma può ben averne tratto la prima ispirazione per la composizione della sua tragedia masanielliana.” Mario Melchionda, “Introduzione. 1699: entertainment e satira tory,” in Melchionda, Drammi masanielliani, pp. 173–213, at p. 178. 18 See Thomas Asselijn, Op- en onder-gang van Mas Anjello, of Napelse beroerte: (voorgevallen in ‘t jaar 1647): treurspel, by Marijke Meijer Drees (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1994). The Italian text is published in Masaniello nella drammaturgia europea, p. 111. Note also

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ANJELLO, door de damp van Staatzugt aangedreven, En door de drift des volks, gesteegen in den top Van hoogheijdt, moordt, en brandt, en werpt zich zelven op Tot Hooft des Ryks, en werdt gelijk een Vorst verheeven. Heerst met geweldt, en recht een School van gruwlen an; Tot dat hij holdt, en sterft op ‘t laatst als een tijran.

In the Van den Bos edition, under another portrait, the poet Joost van den Vondel links Masaniello to Phaeton: You see well Masaniello, who, with this image, presents himself to all, From fish stall he rose high, to the royal throne. He helped the skittish Neapolitan horse to run, And then, like Phaeton, lost his wits, And in a mere instant fell in to earth. Obeyed like a prince, shot like a dog. Zie Mas’Anjello hier in print voor elck ten toon. Die van de Vischbanck klom op’s Konings hoogen Troon Het kitteloorigh Paert van Napels holp aen t hollen En, op zijn Faetons, geraeckt aan’t zuizebollen In eenen oogenblick ging plotseling te gront Gehoorzaemt als een Vorst, door schoten als een hont.

There are signs that the negative image in Giraffi’s work had here made fair headway. Still, some did hear talk of Masaniello, or read his story, with enthusiasm. As is well known, Spinoza is said to have portrayed himself dressed in the fashion of the Neapolitan f isherman, as his biographer Kohler wrote; most likely the philosopher saw in Masaniello a symbol of a struggle for liberty that he too waged.19 It is less well known that one Dutch playwright, Thomas Asselijn, did cast Masaniello in a good light, as defender the comments of Villari on Masaniello’s European fortunes, in Elogio della dissimulazione, pp. 74 ff. Peter Burke briefly cited these verses in his “Masaniello: A Response,” 197–199. 19 Johannes Kohler [Colerus] and Jean-Maximilien Lucas, Le vite di Spinoza, edited by Roberto Bordoli (Macerata: Quodlibet, 1994), pp. 72–73. The cult of liberty led Spinoza to identify with Masaniello. See Dini, Masaniello, p. 49. Even this self-portrait, of unknown date, which has never been found, connects to Spinoza’s political faith. He supported the de Witt brothers, champions of the republic, later killed. See Saverio Ricci, “La libertà corre sui mari. Dai canali di Amsterdam, dalle acque del Tamigi, al golfo di Napoli,” in Musi, Masaniello, pp. 38–41.

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of both king and people. In his Op- en Ondergang van Mas Anjello, of Napelse beroerte [Rise and Fall of Mas Aniello, or the Neapolitan Revolt], he once more made use of Giraffi’s chronicle (the edition published in Haarlem).20 According to Aleid Peters, who translated the Italian version of the play, what drove Asselijn to write it was a desire to show that the Netherlands could reach both political and cultural autonomy, writing their own plays, not translating them from French, Spanish or German.21 Meanwhile, the text also pursues a didactic objective, portraying a Capopopolo both serious and just, a devoted subject of king and fatherland. Indeed, Masaniello reaffirms more than once that he rebels not against the king but against tyrants. For the common good, no one should stir up a revolt. But those who try to govern like despots and eye more their own interests than the prince’s honour […] those who try to oppress the people with violence and on their own write laws to trample on each man’s neck […] The authorities should be blocked in their actions, for the people’s good. Against them one may rebel to save the state from violence. Only thus can one defend the people’s right and the honour of the kingdom.22

The political-theoretical text used by Asselijn as model for his profile of the people’s young leader seems to have been the Vindiciae contra tyrannos (1579), by the pseudonymous Junius Brutus, a tract that legitimated active resistance against tyrants.23 In the play, that title seems invoked in words both by Masaniello: “But nature obligates us to take vengeance against tyrants” (“Natuur gebiedt u weer te wreeken aan tyrannen”: Act I), and by Perrone: “No sweeter vengeance than taking vengeance against tyrants” 20 This study has used Thomas Asselijn, Ascesa e crollo di Mas Anjello o la rivolta di Napoli (avvenuta nell’anno 1647), translated into Italian by Aleid Peters, in Masaniello nella drammaturgia europea, p. 184 ff. The prolif ic playwright Asselijn, French by origin (he was born in Dieppe around 1620), died at Amsterdam in 1701. 21 See Aleid Peters, “Thomas Asselyn (1618–1701),” in Masaniello nella drammaturgia europea, p. 185. 22 Act I, scene III, line 99 ff; in the Dutch edition, edited by Marijke Meijer Drees, 2006: https:// www.dbnl.org/tekst/asse001open01_01/colofon.php (accessed 28 May 2022), pp. 30–31 23 This study worked with an Italian translation: Stephanus Junius Brutus, Vindiciae contra Tyrannos, edited by Saffo Testoni Binetti (Turin: La Rosa, 1994), p. XXVII. See also Martin van Gelderen, “A Political Theory of the Dutch Revolt and the Vindiciae contra Tyrannos,” Il Pensiero politico, XIX (1986): 163–181. There have been assorted English translations, one of them published, pertinently, in 1648: Vindiciae contra tyrannos, a defence of liberty against tyrants, or, Of the lawful power of the Prince over the people, and of the people over the Prince being a treatise written in Latin and French by Junius Brutus and translated out of both into English (London: Matthew Simmons and Robert Ibbitson, 1648).

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(“Geen zoeter wraak dan zich te wreeken aan tyrannen”: Act I). It is also thanks to this tract that not just persons, but the entire revolt is rehabilitated, to the point that the uprising actually appears to end well.24 If, inevitably, the Capopopolo indeed is killed, after a brief spell here not of madness but of mere fatigue, the play suggests that his revolt, all told, did the state some good, having restored the king’s laws to their pristine state, and thus brought liberty.

4. In Germany In Germany too, one writer turned to Giraffi’s chronicle, in translation, for a play published in 1683: Von dem Neapolitanischen Haupt Rebellen Masaniello [On the Neapolitan Chief Rebel Masaniello], by Christian Weise, who in those years directed the Zittau Gymnasium.25 The playwright spotted a useful theme in the Masaniello episode, for teaching his pupils how to remedy events like what happened at Naples. Above all, as he suggests from his very first scenes, it was important to be practical. Once the revolt breaks out, a discussion ensues: what is to be done? The moralist, one Donato, is 24 There are many differences with the play by T.B.; Asselijn’s Masaniello speaks long, and wisely, to stress the right to rebel if a government becomes tyrannical. In the Dutch context, revolt, as a device to install a new order, was no longer well regarded: Marijke Meijer Drees, “The Revolt of Masaniello on Stage: An International Perspective,” in From Revolt to Riches: Culture and History of the Low Countries, 1500–1700, edited by Theo Hermans, Reinier Salverda, and Ulrich Tiedau (London: UCL Press, [1993] 2017), pp. 207–213. The middle class to which Asselijn belonged had great respect for the Dutch Republic’s regents, while it represented the rich, and the powerful aristocrats. 25 There is an Italian translation of his play: Christian Weise, Tragedia del Capo-Ribelle Napoletano Masaniello, translation and introduction by Christiane Groeben, in Masaniello nella drammaturgia europea, pp. 221–305; this book’s text depends on the German translation of Giraffi: see Italo Michele Battafarano, “Alessandro Giraffi und Christian Weise,” in Battafarano, Von Andrea zu Vico. Untersuchungen zur zwischen deutscher und italienischer Literatur im 17. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Akademischer Verlag Hans-Dieter Heinz, 1979), pp. 107–170, and Italo Michele Battafarano, “Von der Chronik zum Trauerspiel: Alessandro Giraffi und Christian Weise über den Aufstand des Masaniello in Neapel (1647),” Daphnis, 11 (1982): 277–285; Christian Weise, Masaniello, edited by Fritz Martini (Stuttgart: Philip Reclam jun., 1978). Weise was born in 1642; after studying and teaching at the University of Lepizig, he worked at the Gymnasium in Zittau until his death. He has an impressive bibliography: more than 170 titles; see Groeben, “Il lungo cammino da Napoli a Zittau,” in Masaniello nella drammaturgia europea, pp. 221–241; on his ideal of the state, see also Evelyn Preuss, “Christian Weise’s Masaniello: Rewriting the Peace of Westphalia,” Focus on Literatur, vol. 5, no. 2 (1998): 85–105; Rengenier Rittersma, Mytho-Poetics at Work: A Study of the Figure of Egmont, the Dutch Revolt and Its Influence in Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2018), pp. 235 ff.

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unmasked by Allegro, a sort of German Pulcinella character: “It would be better not to burden so much the poor,” says Donato. Allegro soon gives Donato reasons to back away from his “piety.” “Never would I have thought our secretary were a man so honest!” In reality, Donato had already given enough thought to his own welfare (Act I, scene 8). In Weise’s day, it was inopportune to make such political comments. What mattered was to act according to a certain standard. It fell to the play’s cardinal to impart one of the lessons that Weise wanted his students to imbibe, a teaching flowing from the political literature of his day, which dwelt on how princes and their ministers could prevent, or, if prevention arrived too late, overcome evils like revolts or rebellions. Rather than use fire and sword, feign to cede to the desires of the enraged people, bend one’s head. “Perhaps we will see the time when one can set oneself back up again. And one can say with confidence: a viceroy can easily be generous with his promises. For, if he has done too much, the king, or his successor, can change it” (Act I, scene 17).26 Under these cultural conditions, it is clear why Masaniello is barely “touched up” from Weise’s source, Giraffi: he stirs his people to insurrection, commands disastrous fires, sends men to their deaths. He is a true menace to the constituted order.27 For this very reason, in the play, the strategy – first strip him of authority, then kill him – seems fitting. Even the viceroy’s recourse to poison, which the play treats as indeed true, is portrayed as efficacious, as per the Machiavellian maxim that the end justifies the means: having now gone mad and grown cruel in meting out justice, Masaniello at the end is killed. In the final speech, the playwright does not hesitate to ascribe his death to divine Providence, which stepped in to see a rebel pay his due in blood.28 26 Trauer-Spiel von dem Neapolitanischen Haupt-Rebellen Masaniello, praesentiret in Zittau/ Den 11. Febr. MDCLXXXII in Christian Weisens Zittauisches Theatrum Wie solches Anno M DC LXXXII. praesentiret worden. Bestehende in drey unterschiedenen Spielen. 1. Von Jacobs doppelter Heyrath. 2. Von dem Neapolitanischen Rebellen Masaniello. 3. In einer Parodie eines neuen Peter Squenzes von lautern Absurdis Comicis (Zittau: in verlegung Johann Christoph Miethens, Druckts Michael Hartmann, 1683), p. 49: “Vielleicht erleben wir die Zeit, da man sich wieder auffrichten kan, Und etwas im Vertrauen gesagt: Ein Vice-Roy kan leicht im Versprechen freygebig seyn; Denn hat er zu viel gethan, so mag es der König oder der Successor ändern.” 27 The pages that concern Masaniello’s time of rule attribute to the Capopopolo other acts of arbitrary justice, strung midway between comedy and tragedy; with an eye less to history than to fantasy, Weise makes clear the dangers of such a regime as arose in Naples in early July 1647; see scenes 12–15 of the Second Act. 28 “While the conclusion makes it still more possible for divine providence to make sure that a rebel pays with his blood in public.” (Trauer-spiel, p. 236: Epilogue). It is noteworthy that Weise here uses the metaphor of the weeping willow, which bends before storms, or, here, before revolts.

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Weise’s Trauerspiel very likely had later echoes. In 1706, there appeared on the Hamburg stage Barthold Feind’s Masagniello Furioso, with music by Reinhard Keiser, presenting a Masaniello like D’Urfey’s, deranged and love-struck.29 Some years later, he appeared again alongside William Tell as a character in a dialogue of the dead, by David Faßmann, Gespräche in dem Reiche derer Todten: Hundert sechs und sechtzigste Entrevue, zwischen dem berühmten schweitzer Wilhelm Tell und dem Neapolitanischen Fischer Masaniello so Anno 1647 zu Neapolis die Rebellen en Chéf commandiret hat [Dialogues in the Realm of the Dead: One Hundred and Sixty-Sixth Interview, between the Famous Swiss, William Tell and the Neapolitan fisherman. Masaniello, who in the Year 1647 commanded the Rebels] (Leipzig, 1732).30 Faßmann compared Masaniello with the Swiss hero. Both were men of the people: Masaniello a fisherman, Tell a fisherman and herdsman. But their stories were very different; they played out in very different landscapes. Tell grew up in the somewhat more “peaceful North,” Masaniello at the foot of a volcano. And their communities of birth differed. In the Swiss cantons, the people and the nobles, the legend would have it, fought side by side against the bailiffs, administrators sent by the Austrian duke who was also emperor. At Naples, however, the nobles had sought to kill the Capopopolo. And, finally, Tell succeeded. He won the apple contest and defeated the tyrants, while Masaniello proved too easy a mark: first the celebrations, then the drink […]. The play tries to clarify that murky episode (according to Faßmann, Masaniello was poisoned). But for him the Neapolitan leader, as mythic figure, lacked Tell’s lustre.

29 Barthold Feind, Masagniello Furioso. Oder Die Neapolitanische Fischer-Empörung (Hamburg: Hinrich Brummer, 1708), vol. I, pp. 215–320. Leopold Silke, “Feinds und Keisers Masagniello furioso: eine politische Oper?,” Hamburger Jahrbuch für Musikwissenschaft, V (1981): 55–68; Feind had returned from a trip to Italy (1705). His few remarks on the conditions of life in Naples show some sympathy for the Neapolitan population. Masaniello is not a positive figure: through him, Feind wants to show the “dark side” of a rebel. His madness was not provoked but was rather due to his “limited possibilities” in the world of politics: see David Yearsley, “The Musical Patriots of the Hamburg Opera. Matheson, Keiser, and Masaniello Furioso,” in Patriotism, Cosmopolitism, and National Culture in Hamburg 1700–1933, edited by Peter Uwe Hohendahl (Amsterdam-New York: Rodopi B.V., 2003), pp. 33–48; for the German texts, see Laura Auteri, “Masaniello,” in Dizionario dei personaggi (Turin: UTET, 2003), vol. II, pp. 1265–1266. 30 David Faßmann, Gespräche in dem Reiche derer Todten. Hundert sechs und sechtzigste Entrevue, zwischen dem berühmten schweitzer Wilhelm Tell und […] Masaniello (Leipzig: Wolfgang Deer, 1732). This study here has consulted an Italian translation, made for me by Dr. Christiane Groeben, Centosessantaseiesimo dialogo tra il famoso Wilhelm Tell e Masaniello […], p. 3.

XVI. The Eighteenth Century: People and Plebeians Abstract In the Eighteenth century, some texts on Masaniello remained in manuscript. Among them is Francesco Oliva’s Napole acquietato, written in Neapolitan, where Naples prays God for succour. So God sends Masaniello. The publication of Modène’s work (1665-1666) laid a foundation for other historical and literary works (Midon, de Lussan, Meißner), where the Neapolitan capopopolo is handled more gently than in Giraffi’s rendering, which has him dashing towards ambition, madness and tyranny. Although Giraffi is still read, in the city when democratic revolution comes (1799) Masaniello is exalted as a fellow patriot by the new republican patriots. His true nature counts for little: Eleonora Pimentel de Fonseca, Vincenzo Cuoco and other writers exalt him as a worthy capopopolo. Keywords: Oliva, Corvo, Modène, Midon, de Lussan, Cuoco

1.

It Is Not a Miracle…

In assorted works of the dawning eighteenth century, Masaniello received occasional mention, a page or more, seldom at all flattering. First, Paolo Mattia Doria, in his famous Relazione dello stato politico, economico e civile del Regno di Napoli [Relation of the Political, Economic and Civil Condition of the Kingdom of Naples] (1709–1712) remarked that the rise of a fishmonger like Masaniello made patent the crisis besetting the kingdom.1 Then Giannone, in his Dell’istoria civile del regno di Napoli, which for the kingdom’s revolts 1 The people, he writes, “si ridussero a tale, che un semplice venditore di pesci fu bastante a sollevarli, ed unirli,” [they had come so low that a simple fish-monger was all it took to cause them to rise, and to unite them]: Paolo Mattia Doria, Massime del governo spagnolo a Napoli, introduced by Giuseppe Galasso, edited by Vittorio Conti (Naples: Guida, 1973), pp. 37–38. Dini, Masaniello, p. 49, notes this passage.

D’Alessio, S. Masaniello. The Life and Afterlife of a Neapolitan Revolutionary Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2022 doi: 10.5117/9789463721455_ch16

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looked to the seventeenth-century Historia della repubblica veneta of Gian Battista Nani,2 referred to Masaniello’s rise as a phenomenon of those grim years. Once in command, Giannone wrote, Masaniello began to rule with unchecked authority: “Head of the Seditious, and Soul of the Insurrection, proposed the Pretensions, imposed Silence, disposed the Motions, and, as if he had the Destiny of them all in his Power, killed with a Nod, and set fire with a Look; for, to what Place so-ever he beckoned, Heads were struck off, and Houses kindled.”3 In sum: Masaniello being excessively honoured by the Viceroy, as his Wife was by the Viceregina, puffed up with Vanity, began to be disturbed in his Mind, and at last through want of Rest and too much Wine, grown delirious, being insupportable to his own Followers, and cruel to every Body, in the Morning of the 16th of July he was killed in the Convent of the Carmelites by some People hired for that Purpose, and some of his Confidents had the same Fate; and when it was seen, that the Populace were not in the least concerned about his Death; on the contrary, they seemed to be overjoyed at the Sight of his Head upon a Pole, it was thought, that nothing but Peace and Tranquillity would have immediately followed. 4

Overall, this historical writing, with its wide European circulation, accepted the seventeenth-century vision, from the better-known writings, of the revolt’s first days. The effects of these early writings on later readers appear, for instance, in those pages of Montesquieu’s Voyage d’Italie that touched on Naples. The philosopher, writing of the lazzari, adds that it was these folk (ces gens) who “raised high Masaniello, of whom the Spaniards only managed to free themselves by giving him a potion that drove him mad. After that his partisans were easily slowed down.”5 These few remarks show how far this story travelled and 2 Giannone’s dependence on Nani, for this section of his Istoria, has been stressed by Villari, in Elogio della dissimulazione, pp. 7–8; but see also the well-documented essay by Vittor Ivo Comparato, “Pietro Giannone e la rivoluzione napoletana del 1647,” in L’età dei Lumi. Studi storici sul Settecento europeo, in onore di Franco Venturi (Naples: Jovene, 1980), vol. II, pp. 793–835, at p. 797. 3 Pietro Giannone, The Civil History of Naples, translated into English by Captain James Ogilvie (London: printed for the Author, MDCCXXXI), vol. II, p. 762 (book XXXVII). 4 Ibid., p. 763. 5 The English translation here works from Voyages de Montesquieu publies par la baron Albert de Montesquieu (Paris: Alphonse Picard et fils, 1894), vol. II, p. 21. In 1729, the year of the philosophe’s trip to Naples, Giannone’s work was having “a growing European resonance.” See Attanasio Mozzillo, La frontiera del Grand Tour. Viaggi e viaggiatori nel Mezzogiorno borbonico (Naples: Liguori, 1992), p. 14. For Giannone’s fortunes, see especially Giuseppe Ricuperati, “Pietro Giannone: bilancio storiografico e prospettive di ricerca,” in Pietro Giannone e il suo tempo. Atti

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how readily it blended with the culture that received it. This message lodged in an historiography saying that the lower classes abandoned Masaniello to his fate because he was inconstant and devoid of political acumen.

2.

A Hero Sui Generis

Nor in the ensuing years was Masaniello much cited as a positive exemplar, as he had been in Asselijn’s play. The portrait of the Capopopolo in Francesco Oliva’s poem in Neapolitan, Napole Acquietato, Poema Arojeco [Naples Calmed, Heroic Poem] (1727), had its dark side, as it again had soon after in another poem also in the local language, Nicola Corvo’s Storia de li remmure de Napole, ‘ncignate da Masaniello d’Amarfe li 7 luglio 1647 pe’ tutte li journe che isso campaje [History of the Tumults of Naples, Set in Motion by Masaniello d’Amalfi, on 7 July 1647, through all the Days that he Lived].6 Oliva and Corvo lived in the same years; one may have influenced the other in choice of genre and argument. Oliva was a priest, while the younger Corvo was Presidente of the Camera della Sommaria, the judicial body overseeing state finances, when he wrote his “heroic” poem.7 Both men reappraise the Masaniello years, seeing them as very difficult for the city’s people; nevertheless, in their account of the revolt’s first days, both follow Giraffi’s script, and conclude, with him, that the Capopopolo had swiftly gone mad and grown tyrannical. The first octaves of Oliva’s poem denounce trenchantly the misery that beset the city, evident even back then. Naples is portrayed as a woman alone, abandoned to her own devices, on the grassy bank of the River Sebeto that skirted the city’s eastern walls (a stream no longer there). She bears clear del Convegno di studi nel trecentenario della nascita, edited by Raffaele Ajello (Naples: Jovene, 1980), vol. I, pp. 199–230, where it is clear that Giannone’s vision of Masaniello was entangled in the tormented episodes of his own life. 6 Napole acquietato. Poema Arojeco de D. Francisco Auliva, Naples, BNN, XIV G 42, p. 170 (the manuscript is numbered by page, not by folio). Corvo’s poem has been published: Nicola Corvo, Masaniello azzoé li remmure de Napole, edited by Antonio Marzo (Naples: Benincasa, 1997). For the date of its composition in the middle decades of the seventeenth century, see Marco’s introduction, pp. xi–xxiii, at p. xv. 7 There is little biographical information on Oliva, who wrote the poem here at the age of 58, in 1727. Corvo and Oliva flourished, says a note by Rocco Mormile concerning the poem, in the poet’s own hand at the Biblioteca di San Martino, in 1740; see Francesco Oliva, Opere napoletane, edited by Carla Chiara Perrone (Rome: Bulzoni, 1977), and the introductory pages of the section dedicated to Oliva in Enrico Malato, La poesia dialettale napoletana. Testi e note, with preface by Gino Doria (Naples: ESI, 1960), vol. I, pp. 327–334.

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signs – her clothing elegant but ripped, her skin wounded everywhere – of mortifying subjection. Having depicted her, the author then lets her speak. In the local language, the city prays to God, asking Him to look on her and to intervene on her behalf. She is bereft. She is no longer that abundant land of lore. These days, from her breasts comes not milk, but blood, as she herself tells God: See, Lord (and she bares her bosom) How many worms I have at this breast Because there is no milk, for spite they draw my blood drop by drop…

God hears her plea, and contrives that a young man of the market-place “with a blond little moustache, and black eyes / handsome, not tall, not short, a bit stocky…” steps up on her behalf against the “bad government” that has so reduced her.8 The Capopopolo of the 1547 revolt, also named Tommaso Aniello, goes to visit Masaniello, and, while he sleeps, urges him to vanquish hesitation and aid his city: “You [are] from Naples and I was from Sorrento/ two cities placed so near, / I was here in fifteen hundred / forty seven […].”9 So, Masaniello overcomes all resistance, and then encourages the lower orders of the city, those worst afflicted by the gabelle, to bestir themselves: It is no longer just the Plebs now, or the little girls It is one entire People: there are artisans, gowned lawyers, merchants, little buffoons, divided into companies, from here, from there, some have open hands, some have swords or lances, all sorts of weapons, broken or whole.

From here, the story follows the course of Le rivolutioni di Napoli, but with a garnish of invented episodes on the model of the grand heroic poems: it even features the abduction of the beloved, here of course called Berardina, who, in the end, evades her captors.10 Oliva’s Masaniello appears as “humble” 8 The original translated above: “lo mostacciello junno, e ll’uocchie nire, / bello, de meza taglia, chinolillo, / allegro, speretuso[…].” 9 Napole acquietato, Ibid., p. 11. Plot summary of the poem: after hearing the heartfelt prayer of the city, which no longer is the long-reputed “terra dell’abbondanza,” God calls the young man from Lavinaio. After that, the Capopopolo of the 1547 revolt against the installation of the Inquisition, Tommaso Aniello Sorrentino, speaks with Masaniello, as a sort of heir. 10 For an evocation of the model of Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata: see Salvatore Iacolare, “Rivoluzioni napoletane. Tra storia e epos,” Quaderni della ricerca, 6, (2020): 297–310.

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and “ambitious”: “when he saw that / he was already absolute master of the Kingdom / ambition pierced his heart and made him lose his mind.”11 The poet lays this metamorphosis on Masaniello’s susceptibility to the viceroy’s artful adulation, but for all that Oliva thinks no less of the viceroy. He gives a nod to the rumour that blamed a “potion” but, in his own story, Masaniello’s “fall” begins before the trip to Posillipo, where, the poet held, he indeed was poisoned. So, once mad and now a tyrant in his tale too, the young man is abandoned by Arpaia and Genoino, who, however, go to the viceroy merely to say that they want to obey him alone (just as appears in the historical source). In the end, Masaniello is killed by the baker Salvatore Catania, resentful of his decrees; there are no allusions to the viceroy’s plot. Clearly, Oliva largely respects the history, as transmitted. But the author does finish off with a positive portrait of Masaniello, who gave his life for the good of his native land, his “patria.” Corvo, who follows the same historical source more painstakingly, also summons up the woes that afflicted the people of Naples.12 Indeed, he presents the revolt as a necessary reaction, at Mother Nature’s behest. Nevertheless, as I have remarked, in his work Masaniello is neither a hero nor a victim of the viceroy or the Spaniards; rather, he is a victim of himself or, once more, of his “ambition.”13 Here, too, he is killed by men of the plebs, the Catania. Corvo is even more reluctant than Oliva to accuse the viceroy of Masaniello’s death, perhaps because the writer trusted Giraffi blindly, or because he hesitated to correct him. Whatever the cause, he merely writes, “Where this fine plot was contrived, God knows; but those who had it in them to do this great thing were the bothers Carlo and Salvatore […] and truly they showed great courage and spirit, to take on this enterprise amidst a crowd so great.”

3.

Modène’s beneficent influence

In those same years, Masaniello was portrayed in a good light in some historical writings, thanks to the Mémoires of the Count of Modène (printed in Paris in 1665–1666). The first account to bear witness to that is by Vittorio Siri in his 11 Napole acquietato, pp. 74 ff. “quanno se vedette / già patrone assoluto de no Regno, / l’ambizione ‘ncore le trasette, e dell’essere sujo passaje lo segno.” 12 Corvo, Masaniello, p. 8. 13 Ibid., pp. 190 ff. We find here many of the episodes put into circulation by Giraffi, with Sauli, for instance.

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Mercurio overo Historia de’ correnti tempi (1644–1682). There, he denounces passionately the Kingdom’s conditions, in line with the French historian: The people, groaning under the harsh vexations, did not neglect recourse to the Viceroy, to make him reach out and feel their pain. Instead of acquiring money for the service of the crown, he rendered desolate the villages, and the fields, which were bereft of cultivators, and the cities were turning into solitudes, and the fields were full of bandits and highwaymen, and for that reason the demands of the taxes kept on growing. But it was preaching to the deaf, as the Viceroy, to have the purses open to satisfy his needs, was constrained to maintain the gabella collectors and the purchasers of fiscal dues.14

Moreover, just as in Modène’s work, in Siri’s pages Masaniello is remembered as endowed with many virtues, beyond the vivacity that Giraffi noted. “There shone in a man of such liveliness a new sort of capacity to move minds, without majesty of appearance, without proofs of valour, without the credit of experience, without any ability to discourse with connected, pondered arguments.” But the greatest break with his source, Le rivolutioni di Napoli, appears in the alleged causes for Masaniello’s decline. Siri tends to blame a banquet the viceroy held on his behalf: He was regaled with precious liqueurs and assorted refreshing drinks, so that, between the cups and the drunken table toasts that went on for many hours, with Masaniello, who was, among other things, devoted to wine, drinking many carafes of lagrima di Cristo, which drove him off his head, and there was the suspicion that he had been brought some kind of poison that damaged the brain. Certainly, from that moment on, he was never right in the head, every hour more frenetic, and he felt his innards burning in hottest flames, with unquenchable thirst.15 14 Vittorio Siri, Del Mercurio overo Historia de’ correnti tempi di V.S. (Lyons: Jean-Antoine Huguetan & Marc’Antoine Rauaud), tome X, p. 16. Note that Siri calls Modène’s chronicle a “bella Historia,” and translates excerpts. The author was in debt to Mazarin and to the Duke of Modène (“Accettato l’invito di quest’ultimo, nel novembre del 1649 Siri andò poi a Parigi dove venne accolto favorevolmente dal Mazzarino.”): for more on the author, see Stefano Villani, “La prima rivoluzione inglese nelle pagine del Mercurio di Vittorio Siri,” in L’informazione politica in Italia (secoli XVI–XVIII). Atti del seminario organizzato presso la Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, 23 e 24 Giugno, 1997, edited by Elena Fasano Guarini and Mario Rosa (Pisa: Scuola Normale Superiore, 2001), pp. 137–172, at p. 144; Alessia Ceccarelli, “Vittorio Siri,” DBI, vol. 92 (2018). 15 Siri, Del Mercurio, p. 129. In these pages Siri’s literary debt to Modène is clear. Note some passages. Masaniello was “il sostegno e il redentore della patria, il flagello de’ tiranni, il restauratore dell’abbondanza e il padre del fedelissimo popolo” (p. 138).

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So, in the very century when, as we have seen, on every side most spoke ill of Masaniello, the foundations were laid for a full rehabilitation, his return “into play” in the public realm. Soon after, in England there surfaced a work more benevolent to Masaniello than any till then current: The Remarkable History of the Rise and Fall of Masaniello (1729) by Francis Midon. We know little of the author, or why he took up the theme. Nevertheless, his dedication to John, Viscount Tyrconnel, Baron of Charleville (to whom Midon says he was a “devoted servant”) proclaims his desire to render homage to the Neapolitan Capopopolo: I take the liberty to present Masanello to your Lordship, with a certain Assurance, that under your Protection, he’ll meet with a more human Treatment here, than formerly he did from his own countrymen, who rewarded all his past services with the highest Ingratitude. And indeed, my Lord, where could the History of this Brave Patriot find a fitter Patron than Your Lordship, who are so great a Cherisher of learning, and so sincere a lover of your Country.16

Not only when alive, Midon continues, but also after death, that “patriot” has been abused by the historians, keener to defend their own interests than to tell the truth: “Several Authors have indeed treated on this Subject, in French, in Latin, and in Italian. But many of them […] have written at their opposite Interests.” But there was just one exception: the Comte de Modène, naturally, whose anti-Spanish spirit was convincing even north of the Alps. To Midon, he seemed to have written “with more Candour and Impartiality than any printed Author upon this subject.” Nevertheless, Midon hewed surprisingly close to Giraffi, in the Howell translation. Laying his work and Howell’s Giraffi side by side proves that many of Midon’s pages are pure transcription.17 Midon was well aware that, to render Masaniello good service, he could use Giraffi, with its clarity, for his own first part, recounting the “ascent,” and then fall back on Modène for 16 Francis Midon, Remarkable History, foreword, page not numbered. The work was republished in London in 1747, 1756, 1768, and 1770. 17 “A young fellow about 24 years old, happened to live in a corner of the Great Market-Place of Naples, of a sprightly, active disposition, pleasant and humorous,” in Midon, Remarkable History, p. 13; compare with that “A young man about twenty-four years old happened to be in a corner of the great Market place at Naples, a spiritful man, and pleasant”: Giraffi-Howell, An exact histoire of the late Revolutions, part I, p. 11. And so it goes, for almost the entire work, until the text reaches the last remarks in Modène’s account, translating them verbatim, “All antiquity cannot furnish us with such another Example as his […]”; Modène, Mémoires, p. 121, reads “L’antiquité ne nous saurait fournir un exemple semblable au sien.”

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the rest. The clearest effects of his following Modène are various. Masaniello is not portrayed as an enraged executioner on Friday (11 July), as in Giraffi; he does not go mad of natural causes; he is not killed by the plebs. All told, Midon is far more explicit than most about the viceroy’s role in Masaniello death. As for the most debated question, note what he writes about the madness: Many and various are the Reflections that have been made upon this sudden Madness of Masaniello. Some are of Opinion, that that stupendous Height of Power to which he arrived, as it were in an Instant, made him giddy and turn’d his Brains. Others will have it to be occasioned by the great and continual Fatigues he underwent, scarce ever allowing himself time to take the natural Refreshments of Food or Sleep. But the most probable and received Opinion is, that the viceroy had given an intoxicating Draught, which, by inflaming his Blood, should make him commit such Extravagancies, as would oblige the People to despise and forsake him.18

A transparent calque from Modène turns up a little later, when Midon describes the Sant’Agostino meeting. The leaders of the Popolo, he says, had decided to let Masaniello live, not kill him, but “these Resolutions were not powerful enough to remove the Viceroy’s Fears.” Modène had phrased it: “mais toutes ces résolutions ne pouvant rassurer le duc d’Arcos, quoi qu’il se figurât de voir Masanielle lié et garotté, il ne pouvait le regarder en cet état sans trembler” – “but all these resolutions could not reassure the Duke of Arcos, although he imagined seeing Masaniello bound and garroted, he could not look at him in that state without trembling.”19 Midon ends his account on a positive note. In abandoning their leader the people erred, says he (like Modène), but then set forth its claims, the day after the discovery that by losing Masaniello it had lost the grassa too, that heavy loaf he had fought for. That spirited reaction, and their dogged insistence on a funeral, Midon deemed worthy of praise and commemoration, as proof of what a tyrannical government provoked. 18 Midon, Remarkable History, p. 184. 19 So, Midon reformulates Modène, for whom the viceroy “trembles” when the thinks of Masaniello “bound” and “chained” (Modène, Mémoires, p. 116). As is clear, relying on the authority of the French historian, who had himself taken part in the revolt, Midon does not hesitate to attribute to the Duke of Arcos, despite his loyalty to Masaniello, the scheme that led to his death. We are here a mere short step from the bolder, patriotic future revisions of the tale.

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This was the beginning of a civil war, that in the End proved fatal to the Spaniards. The Authors of it, unimproved, by so recent an Example of what an injured and exasperated People can do in their own Defence, and the Defence of their Liberty, soon saw themselves and their Country involved in all the Calamities and Horrors that attend intestine Feuds and Dissentions: and some of them, by meeting with a more hasty and exemplary Punishment, have left behind them an everlasting Monument of the Wrath of Heaven against perjured and avaricious Ministers.20

With such retouchings, Masaniello’s story at last figured as glorious. This shift explains his presence, many years later, in an article by Thomas Spence, Pig’s meat; or, Lessons for the people. Alias (according to Burke) The Swinish multitude, published in weekly penny numbers […] (1795), a publication aimed at the lower classes, to rebut the unsettling reflections by Edmund Burke on the Revolution in France, ideas that threatened “popular” political gains. “Swinish multitude” – the expression was Burke’s, and Spence recalled it to face its author down.21

4. In France Also much indebted to Modène was the author of Histoire de la Révolution du Royaume de Naples, dans les années 1647 & 1648. Par M. de L. (Paris, 1757) Baudot de Juilly hid under the nom de plume, Madamoiselle de Lussan, so here we call him de Lussan. Both the title and the work’s bulk, four volumes in all, make clear this author’s idea of the revolt. In the dedication 20 Midon, Remarkable History, p. 210. 21 The story of Masaniello’s revolt (Midon’s, it seems likely, even if in the journal his name fails to appear) figures in “The Pig’s meat; or, Lessons for the people alias according to Burke The Swinish multitude, published in penny numbers weekly” (London: T. Spence-Little Turnstile-High Holborn, 1793–1795), vol. III, pp. 22 ff. The title hoped to provoke the “humble” reader, to alert him to the aggressive nature of the conservative current after the French Revolution. For the radicals, of whom Spence was a brilliant exponent, see the interesting essay of Olivia Smith, The Politics of Language, 1791–1819 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), pp. 105 ff, where she explores the links between that movement and British socialism. Masaniello will be exalted by an English socialist of the early twentieth century, James Leatham, who viewed him as a loser destined, by his very example, to win later, a great loser on the level of Jesus, Bruno, Vanini, Telesio, and Huss: James Leatham, Masaniello, the fisherman who made a revolution (Cottingham: The Cottingham Press, 1914). Masaniello was adopted by the lowly, and by workers, as a myth of dissent, in other contexts too. Nevertheless, as I will say in our final chapter, in the twentieth century his story was most often rewritten by authors interested in Naples both past and present, to express their idea of the city’s complex identity and “ills.”

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to Madame de Pompadour he writes: he would treat of the most “surprising Revolution that ever happened in Europe, a unique Revolution, singular in its circumstances, where ambition had no part.”22 The work looked to varied anti-Spanish sources, not to Modène’s Histoire and Guise’s Mémoires alone. That explains its emphatic tone and particularly severe assessments of the Spanish viceroys, Arcos in particular, who figures as a pupil of diabolical Machiavelli: “He enriched himself by every sort of way. Everything was venal: dignities, offices, graces, privileges, commissions. Imbued with the genius of his nation, he fomented the division of all the social bodies, animated their hatred, their jealousy, and profited from every occasion.”23 Masaniello was his opposite: he was “the prince of the people.” He had extraordinary sentiments, the firm, sweet air of the great (thus had already begun the enrichment of Masaniello’s character with the virtues that later stirred enthusiasm and participation in his story, as they would during the Risorgimento).24 The author’s clear, searing message was that the viceroy, jealous and afraid of him, had fought Masaniello and then taken his life. A Masaniello, as a firm, just “prince,” also features in the account by August Gottlieb Meißner, Masaniello, ou la Révolution de Naples, f irst published in Leipzig in 1784, but translated into French and released in Vienna and Paris in fateful 1789.25 In the lowest class of the people was Tommaso Aniello, commonly called Masaniello, son of a poor fisherman of Amalfi, who barely made a living with the product of his fishing. Twenty-five years old, of medium height and slender, of an agreeable visage, a sinister expression, a body limber and robust. Despite the baseness of his extraction, his spirit, his courage and even his prudence raised him above ordinary men. Extremely alert to injustices and prone to vengeance; true friend, trenchant enemy.26 22 De Lussan, Histoire de la Révolution, vol. I, p. 1: “surprenante Révolution qui soit jamais arrivée en Europe; d’une Révolution unique, singulière dans ses circonstances, où l’ambition n’eut aucune part.” 23 Ibid., p. 15. “Il s’enrichissoit par toute sorte de voie. Tout étoit venal: dignités, charges, graces, priviléges [sic ‘é’], commissions. Instruit du genie de la nation, il fomentoit la division dans tous les corps, animoit leur haine, leur jalousie & profitoit de toutes les occurrences.” 24 Ibid., p. 36. 25 We cite the French edition: August Gottlieb Meißner, Masaniello, ou la Révolution de Naples, Fragment historique, translated by M. Meißner (Vienna and Paris: Hôtel Bouthillier, 1789). 26 The French translation is now rare. The passage states: “Dans la derniere classe du peuple étoit Thomas Aniello, communément nommé Masaniello, fils d’un poissonnier indigent d’Amalfi, qui se nourrissoit avec peine du produit de la pêche. 25 ans, d’une taille moyenne et mince, d’une phisionomie agréable, le regard sinistre, un corps dégagé et robuste. Malgré la bassesse de son

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Likewise, for Meißner, professor of Aesthetics and Classical Literature at Prague, Masaniello was to be remembered as a hero. He had never become a tyrant: his judicial decisions had always been inspired by good sense. For Meißner, the much-discussed metamorphosis was owed to fear: “the continual fear of being assassinated, a fear too well-grounded, disturbed him night and day; it was not sufficient that this young man, entirely unaccustomed to affairs, saw himself laden with the burden of governor of an empire, of general of the army, of judge, and man of state.”27 It was a new explanation, but one that exculpated Masaniello, as did that other one also gaining favour – the drinking. These accounts, offspring of an enlightenment-romantic vision of the people, help explain how Masaniello became once more a positive myth. Beyond a doubt, the need for myths, germane to any revolution – not least the French one – caused him to be portrayed as an able leader of the people. “Give me two hundred Neapolitans carrying on their left arms a muff to serve as buckler; with them I will range across France and I will make the revolution,” Marat roared.28 extraction, son esprit, son courage et même sa prudence le mettoient au-dessus des hommes ordinaires. Extrêmement sensible aux injustices, et porté à la vengeance; ami véritable, ennemmi déterminé,” Ibid., p. 114. 27 Ibid., p. 119: “la crainte continuelle d’être assassiné, crainte trop fondée, l’inquiétât nuit et jour; ce n’étoit pas assez que ce jeune homme entierement étranger aux affaires, se vít chargé du fardeau de gouverneur d’un empire, de général d’armée, de juge et d’homme d’état.” 28 Quoted in Musi, “Masaniello nella storia e nel mito,” in Idem, Masaniello, p. 22; Giuseppe Gorani, a Milanese exile in Paris, was not unaware of Masaniello. He wrote Lettres sur la révolution française, which he published in 1792 in the Gazette nationale ou le Moniteur universel. There, he invited the sovereigns in Italy to make reforms. Despite his strong prejudice against the South Italian plebs, Gorani tried, via Masaniello, to instill a revolutionary spirit in the lower classes. See Franco Venturi, “L’Italia fuori d’Italia,” in Storia d’Italia. Dal primo Settecento all’Unità. L’Italia e l’Europa (Turin: Einaudi, 1973), p. 1122; more recently, Antonino de Francesco, La palla al piede. Una storia del pregiudizio antimeridionale (Milan: Feltrinelli, 2012), p. 34. An example of the myth’s instability: around the events of 1793, in the French press, there circulated a Robespierre-Masaniello analogy, negative in tone. See Francesco Benigno and Daniele Di Bartolomeo, Napoleone deve morire. L’idea di ripetizione storica nella rivoluzione francese (Rome: Salerno editrice, 2020), p. 90, p. 100; somewhat later, in L’Observateur politique, 9 and 11 February 1799, the Neapolitan Capopopolo was reproached as part of a “populace” derided for its low condition, spirit of escroquerie [trickery], its bloody festivals and “fetishist” piety: Anna Maria Rao, Esuli. L’immigrazione politica italiana in Francia, 1792–1802, with a preface by Giuseppe Galasso (Naples: Guida, 1992), p. 143. For the stereotype of the Neapolitan behind this vision, see Melissa Calaresu, “Looking for Virgil’s Tomb: the Grand Tour and the Cosmopolitan Ideal in Europe,” in Voyages and Visions: Towards a Cultural History of Travel, edited by Jaś Elsner and Joan-Pau Rubiés (London: Reaktion Books, 1999), pp. 138 ff.; Nelson Moe, The View from Vesuvius: Italian Culture and the Southern Question (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002);

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5.

For the Parthenopean Republic

During the brief life of the Pathenopean Republic (21 January–13 June 1799), Masaniello was repurposed outright as a “national myth.” Before that revolution, he had been a myth indeed, but dearer to the plebs than to the Popolo above them. It is interesting that, before the republican period, in March of 1794, “to the conspirators who were trying to make converts before the church of the Carmine, a man of the Mercato answered seriously that there was need of another Masaniello […] to be in charge, to direct them.”29 The plebs would obey only a man like him. Benedetto Croce put it well, it seems, when he wrote that the Capopopolo was like Achilles, or Orlando: “They boasted of a story and an epic: and their Achilles and their Orlando was named Masaniello, the barefoot fisherman’s assistant.”30 One of the cantons into which the city was divided during the brief life of the Parthenopean Republic was named for Masaniello. But not only that. Those of the Patriot party cited him often, always with praise. Most likely, they hoped this way to come closer to the plebs, to bring Popolo and plebe closer. As Naples’s problem was the gulf between them, the poetess Eleonora Pimentel de Fonseca wrote, in a famous article in the Monitore, a republican journal she then edited, it behooved the Popolo to “bend” to speaking like the plebs: This part of the Popolo, which, until better instruction raises it to the true dignity of Popolo, it will be necessary to continue to call plebs, comprehends not only the numerous bottom population of the city, but also the other, more respectable [inhabitants] of the countryside: and, if in monarchies, the force of the state reposes upon this part, in Melissa Calaresu, “From the Street to the Stereotype: Urban Space, Travel and the Picturesque in Late Eighteenth-Century Naples,” Italian Studies, 62, 2 (2013): 189–203. 29 The report appears in Tommaso Pedio, Massoni e giacobini nel Regno di Napoli. Emmanuele de Deo e la congiura del 1794 (Matera: Montemurro, 1976), pp. 358–359. It was discussed by Anna Maria Rao, La repubblica napoletana del 1799 (Naples: FedOA, 2021, II ed.), p. 48. 30 Benedetto Croce, “I ‘lazzari’ negli avvenimenti del 1799,” in Idem, Un paradiso abitato da diavoli, edited by Giuseppe Galasso (Milan: Adelphi, 2006), pp. 96–114, at p. 106; note also Venturi’s report that the abbé Coyer, “a minor figure but rather influential in the French Englightenment,” on his Italian trip of 1763–1764, in a Naples hard hit by shortages that touched other cities of Italy as well, like Lucca, Venice, and Genoa, had heard the lazzari shoulting, “Masaniello’s children demand bread”: Venturi, “L’Italia fuori d’Italia,” p. 1059; Hugon notes that Coyer’s correspondence (Voyages d’Italie et de Hollande par M. l’abbé Coyer (Paris: veuve Duchesne, 1775), vol. I, p. 246, by then published, perhaps suggests that Masaniello was still dear to part of the Neapolitan people; see Hugon, Naples insurgée, pp. 337–338.

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Democracies not only the force, but the dignity also reposes there. A great line of separation, and perhaps a greater one than in any other place, separates from us this part of the rest of the people, precisely because we do not have with it a common language. If one goes back to the cause of our most recent ills, one will see that they derive particularly from this separation; it is the secret of every tyranny, and of ours it was all the more so, to foment it. Our secret has to be to destroy it, solicitously; thus, until the plebs, thanks to the establishment of a national education, is brought to think like the Popolo, the Popolo should bend to speak like the plebs.31

In the Monitore, other illuminating articles turn up. One explained that the Mercato cantone had the title: “Great Masaniello First Republican of Naples.”32 The Republic ranged itself in the descent line of the revolt of 1647. All educated men knew that Masaniello had been at heart faithful to the Spaniards but, clearly, they desired to make him one of their party, as a rallying myth and an example for the plebs, to induce them to embrace the Republic and to see it as a necessity, rather than as something “imported” from abroad. This led them to transform his political identity, in a fashion not seen since the time of the revolt itself. But no great bloom of propaganda spoke of Masaniello. That may have been precisely because the Republicans bet on him as a pitch, above all, to the plebs, whom they addressed not in writing but by word of mouth. Nevertheless, they often spoke his name. Commenting on some violent acts by Jacobins in the rural communities, Eleonora Pimentel de Fonseca wrote, “He, without so much light of learning, and of examples, as you now have, gave to Naples the moves; your ancestors carried them forward, they rose up everywhere against despotism, they shouted for the Republic, they tried to establish democracy, and by reasoned instinct alone they claimed the rights of Man. Now, it is the nobles who proclaim equality and democracy, and the populations scorn them!”33 31 Il Monitore Napoletano 1799, edited by Mario Battaglini (Naples: Guida, 1974), pp. 66–67. 32 Episode already noted by Rao, La repubblica napoletana del 1799, p. 35: “gran Masaniello primo repubblicano di Napoli.” 33 Fonseca Pimentel added: “Tralasciate dunque gare e brighe, che in danno vostro ricadono, e de’ vostri figlioli: Se oggi saccheggiate la casa del vostro nemico, domani sarà saccheggiata la vostra” [“Give up contests and fights that end up doing you harm, and your offspring: if today you sack your enemy’s house, tomorrow the house sacked will be yours”], (Il Monitore Napoletano 1799, pp. 251–253). That it was Eleonora de Fonseca Pimentel who wrote these words is implied by some observations of Croce’s: “Il Monitore fu la vita di Eleonora durante la repubblica [The Monitore was Eleonora’s life during the republic]”: Benedetto Croce, La rivoluzione napoletana del 1799, with note by Fulvio Tessitore (Naples: Bibliopolis, 1999), p. 53.

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Note that the historian Vincenzo Cuoco, who soon chronicled the Republic in retrospect, also wrote admiringly of Masaniello, in the aftermath of the experiment’s failure: Masaniello, without our enlightenment, but, at the same time without our vices and our errors, stirred up, in a less happy time, a great revolution in that kingdom: he pushed it forward successfully because the nation desired it, and he had the whole nation with him, because he wanted nothing but what the nation chafed to have. With very few forces, Masaniello dared to oppose, and not in vain, the immense vendetta of the Spanish nation. Masaniello died, but his work remained, nor would the Neapolitans have then lost their liberty, had they not, moved by catastrophic delirium, begged the aid of the Quixotic Duc de Guise, who brought among us ideas and customs that were not those of the nation, and had he, from friend and protector, not wanted to become our master.34

Even if the revolution was a failure – although some lazzari believed in the Republic, like Michele “‘o Pazzo” [the Madman]35 – the example of Masaniello remained precious. In later reflections on the causes for that failure, the Capopopolo often came up, always in a positive light. According to Cuoco, the patriots had erred in not acting as had Masaniello, in full accord with the material and political needs of the people, rather than lean for help on outside powers. At that time the Neapolitan nation, which moved against Spain for love of liberty, for the same love then rallied back to Spain. But if over the course of years there will remain in Naples new occasions to have liberty, the republicans must keep in mind that the first means to render the nation happy is to love it, the second is to know it; neither servile esteem, nor vile admiration, nor the doctrines of the foreigners will ever create the energetic and sublime spirits that free men must be […]. 34 The passage, taken from the Conclusion, appears in the 1801 edition: see Vincenzo Cuoco, Saggio storico sulla rivoluzione di Napoli, critical edition by Antonino De Francesco (Manduria: Lacaita, 1998), pp. 510 ff. 35 See Domenico Scafoglio, Lazzari e giacobini. Cultura popolare e rivoluzione a Napoli nel 1799 (Naples: Guida, 1999), and Domenico Scafoglio, Michele o pazzo e la Repubblica partenopea (Casamicciola Terme: Valentino, 1999); Michele Marino had “Masaniello’s age,” was “married,” like Masaniello, and, having been without a fixed occupation, had become a wine-seller; won over to the republican cause, he had a similar capacity to draw people after him, thanks to a skill at communication that, in a way both clear and humble, touched matters dear to his plebs.

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The anonymous author of the Compendio istorico della rivoluzione e controrivoluzione di Napoli (Naples, 1799) offered some very interesting observations on the events of 1799. There he discussed the nature of the Neapolitan people: was it, as some argued, a people beyond rescue? And were the lazzari a blood-thirsty lot? According to this author, the plebs were now no longer the people of Masaniello, because they now were abased by centuries of despotism and superstition:36 But, to speak truly, the Neapolitan people is not by nature wicked, rapacious, and fierce, as some fellow might have it, either because he observed it superficially, or because he read about it in the fallacious reports of some traveller. But, if he had taken the pains to study it with attention, or perused the stories of the revolutions of Naples, he would be bound to see that it is naturally good, loyal, sensitive, courageous, wise, endowed with talents, full of amour propre, passionately fond of the fatherland, jealous of its independence – a people that he falsely believes enjoys servitude – and also virtuous. As, among other things, is clearly demonstrated by the famous and memorable revolution of Masaniello, where the Neapolitan people showed such character and so much virtue, so, today too it should appear as the marvel and wonder of the nations. This people, guided by pure and simple sentiments of independence and of honour, not only committed no theft – to the contrary, they showed such scorn for wealth that, one day, in the middle of a public square, they burned the rich and precious goods of the state’s financial officers, and especially chests of gold, silver, and precious stone. And when one fellow had the nerve to take from the flames one measly thing, he was immediately arrested, tried, and hanged. But this people have been rendered squalid for centuries under the rod of despotism and superstition; roughened, seduced, and fanaticized since the beginning of the French Revolution by a hellish fury; the lazzaroni, under the impression communicated to them, have 36 Anon., Compendio istorico della rivoluzione e controrivoluzione di Napoli, edited by Luigi Lerro (Naples: Magmata, 1999), pp. 32–33. In the same spirit, Colletta wrote, “The viceroy called the lazzari in his edicts with the honoured name of “popolo”; he heard the laments and the arguments from lazzari deputed as ambassadors to the royal palace, who every year in the piazzas of the market, on a holiday, selected their captain by acclamation, without identifying the voters or counting the votes, and the viceroy conferred with this “capo,” sometimes pretending to want to come to an agreement about the tributes on the foodstuffs, sometimes using the lazzari to uphold the authority of the empire; the famous Tommaso Aniello was capo-lazzaro when, in 1647, the city rebelled.”: Pietro Colletta, Storia del reame di Napoli, edited by Anna Bravo (Turin: UTET, 1975), pp. 214–215. That Masaniello was capo-lazzaro is of course an imprecise expression.

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seen in the French nothing but the thieves of their independence, the violators of their women, the destroyers of their saints, and the invaders of their property. And, by analogy, they were also constrained to hate the Neapolitan patriots as friends of the French and followers of the same principles.

The new wave of interest in the seventeenth-century revolt was impelled by ideas like these. It swelled right at the start of the revolution of 1799.

XVII. A n Italian Hero during the Risorgimento Abstract This chapter is the f irst attempt ever to reconstruct Masaniello’s fortunes in the nineteenth century. It cites many essays, and especially literary works, by Lady Morgan, by Alexandre Dumas, by Scribe and Delavigne, plus the historical works of Michele Baldacchini, and writings, published only recently, of Giuseppe Mazzini; the problem of the reactionary plebs, which surfaced at Naples in 1799, preoccupies such writers, who ruminate on its potentials, and its historical roots. Meanwhile, Masaniello’s reputation soars, as popular hero, a useful mirror for the penniless, to enlist them in the Risorgimento’s battles. Keywords: Risorgimento, popular heroes, Salvator Rosa, Mazzini, political and historical plays

1.

General Considerations

When, after exile, in 1799 Ferdinand IV re-entered Naples, among many things to do, he wanted to remove from the Carmine Masaniello’s remains. This is why today we do not find the seventeenth-century tombstone, but rather an inscription, on a nearby wall, which reads: Lying reparation For a crime pre-ordained The burial place of Masaniello Was here. But it was taken away For political ends By a despotic sovereign

D’Alessio, S. Masaniello. The Life and Afterlife of a Neapolitan Revolutionary Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2022 doi: 10.5117/9789463721455_ch17

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In 1799 During the Parthenopean Revolution1

The king’s action did not snuff out the rebel’s memory. With Naples still restive, the famous Capopopolo soon became an anti-Bourbon myth. The man who propelled this myth, in the period this chapter surveys, was Giuseppe Mazzini, who spoke of the seventeenth-century revolt in his work on the 1799 revolution. Never finished, it was published only fairly recently, by Lauro Rossi, in his Mazzini e la rivoluzione napoletana del 1799. Ricerche sull’Italia giacobina.2 But let us first survey what came to pass before that happened.

2.

Against the Foreigners

For originality, Gian Maria Arrighi’s Saggio storico per servire di studio alle rivoluzioni politiche, e civili del regno di Napoli (1809), in its pages on the revolt has little sparkle.3 The author did not recruit Masaniello to champion liberty from the “foreigners”; the Saggio’s dedication to Joachim-Napoléon Murat, Corsican-born ruler of Naples, helps tell why.4 Nevertheless, Arrighi did stoke thinking ill of the old Spanish Vice-realm; that practice would go on. Some important novelties in the Masaniello myth’s adventure were 1 Gabriele Monaco, Cinque secoli di storia della parrocchia di Masaniello (Naples: Laurenziana, 1974), p. 61. 2 For the composition and structure of Mazzini’s text, written between 1835 and 1840, see Lauro Rossi, Mazzini e la rivoluzione napoletana del 1799. Ricerche sull’Italia giacobina, postscript by Carlo Zaghi (Manduria: Lacaita, 1995). It was well known that for Mazzini the Mezzogiorno was “the fuse by which the power magazine of the Italian national movement would be set on fire”: according to Giuseppe Galasso, “Mazzini joined and fused together, in the bright fire of his national and republican thought, diverse and heterogeneous images of the Mezzogiorno, from that of Masaniello, lower-class champion of liberty – to his eyes – against foreign oppression, to that of the 1799 republicans, victims of Bourbon reaction, and, finally, to the images of the Calabrians who had fought against the French in the Napoleonic period in the name of their fealty to the sovereign of whom the 1799 patriots had been the victims. For Mazzini, from this stemmed the idea of a country proud, generous, at battle with constituted authority and with the foreigner, and already accustomed to speak of the republic and of liberty.” Giuseppe Galasso, La Democrazia da Cattaneo a Rosselli (Florence: Le Monnier, 1982), p. 21. 3 Giuseppe Maria Arrighi, Saggio storico per servire di studio alle rivoluzioni politiche, e civili del regno di Napoli (Naples: Stamperia del Corriere, 1809), vol. II. 4 Arrighi’s discretion is clear in how he wrote about Masaniello’s transformation: “Meanwhile, puffed up with vanity, Masaniello no longer respected limits, or moderation in command,” Arrighi, Saggio storico, p. 64. On his political position, see Antonino De Francesco, “La rappresentazione della Spagna nella cultura napoletana tra rivoluzioni e Restaurazione” in Alle origini di una nazione, pp. 227–244.

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introduced by an Irish writer, Lady Morgan (Sydney Owenson), the author of several works clearly inspired by Germaine de Staël: Woman, or Ida of Athens (1809) for instance, and O’Donnel (1814). Lady Morgan achieved fame with Italy, a history Byron defined as “fearless and excellent.”5 Donatella Abbate Badin, studying the text, pointed out the great interest of the pages that treat the Neapolitan revolution of 1799.6 The writer, says Abbate Badin, had much enthusiasm for the Neapolitan enterprise, seeing in Naples under Bourbon rule her own Ireland under the English hand. Something similar can be said for the revolt of 1647. In Italy, only a few notices of that event appear, but they do show that Lady Morgan saw no deep difference between the two revolutions. That appears more clearly in another work of hers, The Life and times of Salvator Rosa (1824).7 The author was sure that the painter Salvator Rosa had taken part in the 1647 rising, from its first days, as a member of the Compagnia della Morte, a band of artists that, to her eye, had supported Masaniello. All evidence asserting the painter’s participation in the revolt, found in biographical collections like that of Bernardo De Dominici, Vite de’ pittori, scultori ed architetti napoletani (1742), Croce found utterly baseless, as no document attests to the artist’s presence in Naples in the revolt’s first months.8 But Lady Morgan saw no reason to doubt it. Moreover, she alleges that, on a trip to Rome, she managed to view some portraits of Masaniello seen “by torch light,” attributed to Salvator Rosa. Imagination went a long way: the artist had been at Masaniello’s side. He had supported the rebel and painted him from life. “Masaniello at midnight sat in close but not secret councils. The 5 For Morgan, as depicted here, see Dennis R. Dean, “Morgan, Sidney,” in Dictionary of National Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 39, pp. 141–143. 6 See Donatella Abbate Badin, “Giacobini irlandesi e napoletani a confronto in ‘Italy’ di lady Morgan,” in Novantanove in idea: linguaggi miti memorie, edited by Augusto Placanica and Maria Rosaria Pelizzari (Naples: ESI, 2002), p. 313; Ead., Lady Morgan’s Italy. Anglo-Irish Sensibilities and Italian Realities (Bethesda, MD: Academica Press, 2007). 7 Lady Morgan, The Life and Times of Salvator Rosa (Paris: A. Belin, 1824). 8 Croce showed that the letters of Salvator Rosa, in Poesie e lettere edite ed inedite, edited by Giovanni Alfredo Cesareo (Naples: Tipografia della Regia Università, 1892), 2 vols., proved that at the time of the revolt the artist was not in the Kingdom of Naples. For a contrary claim, see Bernardo De Dominici, Vite de pittori, scultori ed architetti napoletani (Naples: F. and C. Ricciardi, MDCCXLII), p. 226: Benedetto Croce, “Salvator Rosa,” in Saggi sulla letteratura italiana del Seicento (Bari: Laterza, 1911), pp. 317–359. Maria Rosaria Nappi, in her “I ritratti di Masaniello. Una scoperta di Bartolommeo Capasso e le ipotesi di Bernardo de Dominici,” Archivio storico per le province napoletane, vol. CXX (2002): 113–146, pointed out that the letters do not rule out that Salvator Rosa might have been at Naples in July or a little after, as his summer is not documented. Moreover, a Compagnia della Morte did exist. Fuidoro does write of it in his Successi del governo del conte d’Oñate MDXCLVIII–MDCLIII, edited by Antonio Parente (Naples: Lubrano, 1932), p. 98.

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torches stuck against its rugged walls must have thrown their red and dusky light upon many.”9 Lady Morgan then recounts those days on de Lussan’s model. Her Masaniello, it follows, is a virtuous youngster on whom the tax-collector’s blade falls hard. And Lady Morgan, like de Lussan, holds that no mere spirit of vendetta moved him to raise the people. Rather, it was his philanthropy. Her Masaniello understood the need for actions to secure for all both their needs, for their survival, and their lost dignity. The author then relates the people’s conquests and, in the end, Masaniello’s decline. On this last, her departure from de Lussan is clear: while he rejected the poison hypothesis, she writes of a “poisonous drug.” Only under its effects did Masaniello change: “his acts of justice became tinctured by a merciless severity; and his most ordinary actions were suddenly distinguished by wildness and incoherency.”10 Thus, her Masaniello is redeemed. All his alleged injustices are blamed on an external intervention that made him even more patently a victim of the foreigner.11 What Lady Morgan wrote made its mark on others: the short stories of Alexandre Dumas show it, in his Le corricolo [The Open Carriage] (1841–1843), swiftly translated into English as Sketches of Naples (1845). Meanwhile, the libretto of Eugène Scribe and Gemain Delavigne, La Muette de Portici, with music by Daniel-François Esprit Auber, appeared on stage. That opera, too, fostered the myth of this popular hero.

3.

La Muette de Portici

La Muette [The Mute Girl] was f irst staged on 29 February 1828, at the Paris Opera. Thereafter, it played often, in Paris and in London, well past mid-century. In 1868, it debarked in Melbourne as Auber’s Grand Opera of Masaniello. A few years later, in London and New York, a Masaniello (La Muta di Portici), Opera in Five Acts came out in print (Charles Lamb Kenney, Arthur Sullivan and J. Pittman, 1872). And that was not the end of it. The opera’s extraordinary success doubtless owed to an extraordinary event: on 12 August 1830, having gone to a performance at the Théatre Royale de la Monnaie in Brussels, a group of young men incited the population to continue in the streets the battle that just rolled on stage, to liberate Belgium from the Netherlands. Why did that opera have an effect so 9 Lady Morgan, The Life and Times, p. 382. 10 Ibid., p. 402. 11 Ibid., p. 403.

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strong? Let us read the libretto. In the story, one protagonist is Fenella, the title’s mute; another her brother Masaniello. Fenella is seduced by the viceroy’s son, Alfonso, in love with her but betrothed to Elvira, both Spanish and noble. Masaniello fears the worst. At the Portici harbour, he frets, asking what is afoot: has she been abducted? By a foreigner? He prepares to face whatever comes: O amor di patria…/ tu nella pugna vigor ci dai [O love of fatherland…/you give strength in a f ight].12 Then Fenella shows up, distraught: wordlessly, she makes clear by signs that a man, recently married, has abused her. She has come to beg her brother’s pardon, before, she swears, plunging into the sea and dying. Masaniello addresses her: Cruel! A shame on everyone, I will punish that vile man! Crudele! In onta a tutti io punirò quel vile!

The sailors with him offer their support: We are brothers: make use of us… Everyone must follow you!… We are ready to obey you… and to die with you. Fratelli siam: disponi … Derà ciascun seguirti! … Siam pronti ad obbedirti… ed a morir con te.

They are the “fratelli d’Italia,” ready to die for the fatherland. When Masaniello comes to Naples, he stirs the mariners to rebellion, in hopes that the viceroy will bring the prices down.13 The sailors aim to catch Alfonso, but Fenella, in confusion, saves him and entrusts him to her brother. Chafing at this protection of the viceroy’s son, his followers label their chief a tyrant. So the movement splits till the conspirators kill Masaniello, leaving Fenella 12 Masaniello ovvero La muta di Portici. Opera in cinque atti con balli analoghi di Scribe e Germano Delavigne, musica del maestro D.F. Auber (Benevento: [no press], 1862), p. 13. 13 Ibid., p. 17.

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alone, despairing, while “Vesuvius roars with greater fury; from the crater of the volcano lava rushes down.”14 More than the plot as a whole, the dramatic episodes of the opera thrilled the public. Moreover, the music and dancing were particularly engrossing, and, in those years, any word for the fatherland, and against the foreigner, stirred up public fervour.15 Right after the Muette, a second French opera also saw success, with music by Michele Carafa, libretto by Moreau and Lafortelle, Masaniello, ou le Pécheur napolitain (Paris 1828),16 but the former, not the latter, marked the literary tradition we trace here.

4. In Naples A few years later, a new account of the revolt appeared, Storia napoletana dell’anno 1647 (1833), by Michele Baldacchini, brother of the journalist and liberal politician Saverio. Michele was an intellectual who championed “the affirmation of liberal and national ideas, in courageous polemic with the paternalistic and provincial policies of the final Bourbon kingdom.”17 In his preface, Michele Baldacchini declared two objectives: to teach his readers “to hate nothing so much as foreign dominion” and “not to trust casually the blind multitude.”18 Indeed, his entire tale shows how baleful was foreign 14 For this lively stage effect, with its fine flow of lava, we quote here the French libretto: Act V, scene 7: “au même instant le Vésuve mugit avec plus de fureur; du cratère du volcan la lave enflammée se précipite.” The Italian libretto has this rumbling but omits the lava flow: ibid., p. 29. La Muta was put on many times, and the stage directions and story varied, as is clear from Wallace, Masaniello e il folklore della violenza politica. 15 The opera’s success was owed to the times, the story, and the production’s artistry: the “subject itself, that put a hero from the people on the stage, a literary figure dear to movements of national affirmation [risorgimenti]” (Musi, La rivolta di Masaniello, p. 26); it was the age of “heroism for all” [eroismo per tutti] discussed by Luigi Mascilli Migliorini in Il mito dell’eroe. Italia e Francia nell’età della Restaurazione (Naples: Guida, 2003), 2nd edition, pp. 83 ff. 16 In this second opera, Masaniello seems markedly more inward-looking, and tinged with melancholy, “caught between warring feelings.” See Paologiovanni Maione and Francesca Seller, “Il canto di Masaniello,” in Masaniello, edited by Aurelio Musi, pp. 104–111. He does have the patriotic inclinations that stirred the audience for the other opera: “l’humble chaume ou tu reçus la vie Masaniello sers encor ta patrie Masaniello sers encor ta patrie [the humble thatched hut where you were born, Masaniello: serve again your fatherland, Masaniello, serve again your fatherland]”: Masaniello ou Le pécheur Napolitain. Drame Historique en quatre actes, libretto by MM. Moreau et La Fortelle, music by Michele Carafa (Paris: Frère, [no date]). 17 Mario Quattrucci, “Baldacchini, Saverio Gargano,” and “Baldacchini, Michele,” in DBI, vol. V, 1963, pp. 436–439; see also Mario Sansone, “I Fratelli Baldacchini,” in Storia di Napoli, vol. IX (Cava de’ Tirreni: Società Editrice Storia di Napoli, 1972), pp. 395–415. 18 I use the edition: Storia napoletana dell’anno 1647 (Naples: Stamperia di F. Ferrante, 1863), p. 12.

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rule. Using many sources, Baldacchini depicts the people of the kingdom as in the direst straits: “Word has it that to some misfortunates, who came to Naples from the provinces to tell how they no could longer find a way to satisfy the avaricious and cruel tax collectors, one of the principal royal ministers gave this answer: ‘Let them sell the honour of their wives and their daughters, and that way they could fulfill their obligation’.”19 Baldacchini then shows great sympathy for Masaniello, whom he portrays according to the canons of the time. He is a lively youth, but, as the romantic mode required, also melancholy. See his utterly nineteenthcentury portrait: “his face was brown and somewhat burnt by the sun; the black eye, the blond hair, which, in an unruly shock, ran down his neck […]. In speech he was ready and playful; in his look, always melancholic. He had high, generous spirits, better than his birth and lowly condition of life expected of him.”20 Baldacchini’s admiration is clear: Masaniello had begun a work he believed intellectuals of the time never would have attempted. Once Berardina was freed, “he began to intend a thing no longer done among us now: to avenge, with his private offenses, public ones too, at the same time.”21 This admiration leads Baldacchini to tell Masaniello’s story in fine detail, lauding him at many junctures. The sources to hand had prepared the way for Baldacchini’s work, but he was also personally eager to see justice done and to stimulate new thinking on old subjects still current. Baldacchini, too, attaches the most unfortunate days of Masaniello’s life to the viceroy’s strategy, without, however, vouching for the drink hypothesis. The poison was just the adulation, used by the duke of Arcos as a device to bind the Capopopolo. The poison was true too: but that does not mean that it was administered to him by means of delicate sauces or treats. In the adulations heaped on him, in the flatteries, in the courtly ways, and then the artifices – all that would have made anybody lose his head, all the more so a person who 19 Ibid., p. 18. Here, the theme of the decadence of seventeenth-century Italy enters the discussion of history and politics: we are at the end of an evolution well laid out in Marcello Verga, “La Spagna e il paradigma della decadenza italiana tra Seicento e Settecento,” in Alle origini di una nazione, pp. 49–81. 20 Michele Baldacchini, Storia Napoletana dell’anno 1647 (Naples: Stamperia di F. Ferrante & Co., 1863), p. 34. 21 Ibid., p. 35. Here, we see Baldachini’s sincere admiration for Masaniello, as noted by Musi: “But his heart beat for Masaniello, his taste for the particular and for elegance were sought above all in the locus of his portrait.” (La rivolta di Masaniello, p. 26).

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had unexpectedly risen from nothing to a boundless height, all that, to my mind, was the hidden venom.22

Baldacchini dedicates his final pages to another objective – to show the inconstancy of the multitude. We are amidst the moments after Masaniello’s murder. Here, Baldacchini follows Giannone, who had portrayed the plebs as devoid of all feelings at his death: “The plebs not only looked with an indifferent eye on all this scene of horror, but bending to the aura of a change in fate, was seen, with tawdry joy, to help drag the body of its recently adored Masaniello. No reason, to my mind, can justify a deed so barbarous.”23 As we shall see, other, later authors will shy from repeating this condemnation; instead, they will point a resolute finger at the “tyrant viceroy.”

5.

A Daring Biography: Alexandre Dumas

Dumas, as we expected, approached Masaniello “by way of Scribe and Delavigne,” as he himself declares on the pages of his story, La place du Marché; It was on the piazza del Mercato that the famous revolution of Masaniello broke out, now so popular in France since the production of la Muette de Portici. It is thus almost ridiculous of me to expand on this revolution. But, as operas in general make no claim to be works of history, perhaps I will be able, apropos of the hero of Amalfi, to say some things forgotten by my fellow writer and friend Scribe.24

In reality, Dumas wished not to reconstruct the story of the revolt, which had helped make famous some Neapolitan places, like the market, but rather so to recount it as to kindle hatred for the viceroy and to relaunch the Masaniello myth. The author wrote his Masaniello pages (La place du 22 Ibid., p. 102. 23 Ibid., p. 120. 24 Alexandre Dumas, Chapter 19 of the Corricolo. Available online at: http://www.dumaspere. com/pages/bibliotheque/chapitre.php?lid=v4&cid=30 (accessed 28 May 2022): “C’est sur la place du Mercato qu’éclata la fameuse révolution de Masaniello, devenue si populaire en France depuis la représentation de la Muette de Portici. Il est donc presque ridicule à moi de m’étendre sur cette révolution. Mais comme les opéras en général n’ont pas la prétention d’être des oeuvres historiques, peut-être trouverais-je encore à dire, à propos du héros d’Amalfi, des choses oubliées par mon confrère et ami Scribe.”

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Marché and Église del Carmine, later collected in Le Corricolo, as stories V and VI) after a stay in Sicily and Naples.25 Already known for his anti-Bourbon sympathies, Dumas had been charged by members of the Charbonnerie (republicans allied with the Italian Carbonari) to carry messages to the Carbonari in Sicily, and then, at Naples, to hand to the Conte di Siracusa the plan for an insurrection against Ferdinand II; he would have carried out the mission, but the count proved reluctant to conspire against his brother, and, having torn up the plan, he [Dumas] scattered the fragments in the sea at Chiaia. And Dumas, having done this mediation, dedicated himself exclusively to the exploration of the city and its surroundings, to the study of its citizens and of their past history.26

What Dumas wrote about the revolt was more influenced by Lady Morgan than by Scribe and Delavigne. Indeed, at Masaniello’s side, not Fenella, but Salvator Rosa turns up. But not only that. His clear debt to the Irish writer appears on the last pages of L’Eglise del Carmine. Masaniello was at the viceroy’s palace, sure that all was going well. Then: He asked for a glass of water mixed with lemon juice. They brought it to him, and, as he was very hot, he drank it in a single draught; but no sooner had he drunk it than he became so pale that the duchess asked him what was wrong. Masaniello answered her that it was certainly that iced water that had made him ill. Then the duchess, smiling, gave him a bouquet to inhale. Masaniello brought it to his lips to kiss in a sign of respect; but almost as soon as he had touched it, with a rapid and involuntary movement, he threw it far from him.27 25 Two romances took after these stories told in the Corricolo: one, in French, under the pseudonym of Eugène De Mirecourt, Masaniello. La marquis de Noircaste (Paris, G. Harvard, 1858), and the other, in English, Masaniello: Or, The Fisherman’s League: an Historical Romance (New York: Pollard & Moss, 1890). 26 Giacomo Doria, Alessandro Dumas e Napoli, in Alexandre Dumas, Il corricolo (Naples: Colonnese, 2004), pp. vii–xxviii. Dumas later became a fervent Garibaldino, and Garibaldi in turn was godfather to his daughter: Ibid., p. xxvii. 27 Dumas, L’Église del Carmine, same website as in footnote 24: “[Aussi, en arrivant au palais et avant de se mettre à table] demanda-t-il un verre d’eau mêlée de jus de limon. On le lui apporta, et comme il avait très chaud il l’avala d’un trait; mais à peine l’eut-il avalé qu’il devint si pâle que la duchesse lui demanda ce qu’il avait. Masaniello lui répondit que c’était sans doute cette eau glacée qui lui avait fait mal. Alors la duchesse en souriant lui donna un bouquet à respirer. Masaniello y porta les lèvres pour le baiser en signe de respect; mais presque aussitôt qu’il l’eut touché, par un mouvement rapide et involontaire, il le jeta loin de lui.”

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The one to comfort the Capopopolo was his friend, the artist. Failing badly, he has a heartfelt colloquy, telling what had happened to him: “Salvatore Rosa!” cried Masaniello, when he saw his friends, whom for four days he had lost from sight, as Salvatore had been busy, with the Compagnia della Morte, repulsing the Spaniards who had been wanting to enter Naples from the Salerno side. And the two friends threw themselves into one another’s arms. “Yes, yes, poor Masaniello!” said the fisherman-king, falling back on his bed. “Isn’t it so, they set me up so well, and I had reason to trust them […]. It is that infamous Cardinal Filomarino who has done it all, and has betrayed me in the holy name of God.”28

We are here just a step away from the pending mise en scène of the tragedy of Masaniello. Among other things, it is the Capopopolo himself here who announces that he has been the victim of a craftily arranged trap. This denunciation will soon find a new resonance.

6. For the Unity of Italy As would be expected, Mazzini exercised a strong influence in the developments that followed. “‘The Neapolitans are weaklings,’” – so goes his work on the events of 1799 – “Whoever has pronounced these defamatory words did not know the history of the end of the past century […]. Consider Naples at the beginning of 1799, in the moment when it re-awoke from a sleep of […] years.”29 In their “obstinate resistance,” the lazzari had been, to Mazzini, “the unconscious bearers of a national aspiration, however primordial.” In this passage, Mazzini urges the reader more than once to see Masaniello as a symbol that ranged beyond 1647 and that helped express the great potential 28 Ibid., p. 382. The cardinal is here accused of connivence with the viceroy. The accusation is striking, in a very politic body of writing, as it deals with a high prelate, easily a symbol of the prelates of its day. “Salvator Rosa! s’écria Masaniello en reconnaissant son ami, que depuis quatre jours il avait perdu de vue, occupé qu’avait été Salvator, avec la Compagnie de la Mort, à repousser les Espagnols qui avaient voulu entrer à Naples du côté de Salerne. Et les deux amis se jetèrent dans les bras l’un de l’autre. – Oui, oui, pauvre Masaniello! dit le pécheur-roi en retombant sur son lit. N’est-ce pas, et ils m’ont bien arrangé, et j’ai eu raison de me confier à eux ! […] C’est cet infâme cardinal Filomarino qui a tout fait et qui m’a trompé au saint nom de Dieu.” 29 Giuseppe Mazzini, Ai Giovani. Ricordi (1848), in Mazzini, Opere, edited by Luigi Salvatorelli, vol. II (Milan-Rome: Rizzoli, 1939), p. 147.

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of the Neapolitan people. Nor were there any major differences between 1647 and 1799 for Mazzini either: both events had an extraordinary populace, waiting only to be rediscovered and brought yet once more to insurrection. Amidst this isolation […] something remains, a force, an authority is aborning in this power vacuum. And it’s its very self, it alone, the People, the People that has created Masaniello, the poor fisherman, the People that has seen the glare of the conflagration of its fleet and in it has read a sign of its own destiny. Now it roars with fury: the English, Ferdinand, Carolina, Mack, it has cursed everything in its heart and one day it will take revenge on all of them and it will keep this oath. But where are the patriots? Haven’t they seen the People flood the streets like a lava flow.30

As we see here, Mazzini, in Cuoco’s train, tries to bring to light the causes of the 1799 revolution’s failure. To his mind, doubtless one reason was the lack of a leader who stemmed from the people, or who, at least, knew how to love and address them: There was a leader among you, a fisherman who was named Masaniello. Do none of you feel you have it in you to be a Masaniello? Viva il Popolo! The People-King! If this man had been found, he might have cancelled out the future Ruffo [the cardinal whose army defeated the 1799 Republic]. The patriots, meanwhile, were conspiring: the enlightened patriots have not yet understood the power of the People: this is the key to all our disgraces. They have tried to find the fulcrum point for the revolution… they looked for it in the French, they saw the People constrain Mack to liberate Molinterno [Girolamo Pignatelli, Prince of Molinterno, spokesman for the 1799 Republic], and did not understand. They conspired while the People wished to act. This is what the People wants, every time the word “revolution” whispers that its hour has come. Action is the God of the People in revolution. Haul it into action and you will have the possibility of directing it. You don’t do it? You don’t count on it: when it leaves the scene, then you will wish to have it with you, and you will no longer find it. O better than this is a People of the South, a people that has built itself on valours and it will act without you. Then the worse for you, the worse for all those that it will encounter on the street. It will shatter them like glass.31 30 Ibid., p. 151. 31 Ibid., pp. 153–154.

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To Mazzini’s mind, Masaniello had known how to involve “his” people, unlike many patriots now, who are sure that the people, burdened by its ignorance, is incapable of embarking on the path to independence from the foreigner: And do not call this People superstitious, or, rather, don’t make a crime of it, because how can you want the People to change opinion when you have not offered it any other incentive. But it is not an isolated superstition, something that resides only in heaven and has no link at all with the earth. There is a national sentiment hatching under these sentiments, an idea of fatherland that throbs down below. San Gennaro is the patron of the country[…].

Mazzini did not publish those pages, but many of the ideas that he formulated there circulated widely among his followers, who wished to write, to spread propaganda, and to battle for the peninsula’s liberation.

7.

The First Romantic Plays

In 1840, there came out a Dramma storico about the revolt’s first ten days. The author was Pasquale De Virgilii,32 whom De Sanctis, in his literary history of the nineteenth century, called an exponent of European Romanticism.33 This writer from Chieti aligned neatly with the foreign literature dedicated to Masaniello. In his politics, however, he was hardly bold. In those years, one expected a constitution, at royal hand from Ferdinand II, King of the two Sicilies.34 That might explain why in his drama the Capopopolo was, as till then with few exceptions, devoted to Philip IV. Nevertheless, the viceroy’s tyrannical nature comes through clearly, as does his hostility towards the 32 Pasquale De Virgilii, Masaniello. Dramma storico (Brussels: [no press], 1840). 33 Francesco De Sanctis, La letteratura italiana nel secolo XIX. Scuola liberale-Scuola Democratica, lectures collected by Francesco Torraca, with preface and notes by Benedetto Croce (Naples: Morano, 1914), pp. 134–145: “Pasquale De Virgilii’s is not an expression of a tempered Romanticism like Manzoni’s and of the Lombard school, but of a French Revolutionary romanticism, which, along with the liberal aspirations of 1830, arrived in Naples under the protection of a Great Name, Victor Hugo.” De Sanctis had little sympathy for De Virgilii, but writes that his Masaniello had a good number of rivals. 34 Maria Paola Saci, “De Virgilii, Pasquale,” in DBI, vol. 39, 1991, pp. 578–580. Ferdinand II (king from 1830 to 1859) will concede the constitution only in 1848. For the tensions between the liberals and the most conservative members of the Camera of Lords (dei Pari) that was brought to the revolt in May, see Viviana Mellone, Napoli 1848. Il movimento radicale e la rivoluzione (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2017), pp. 259 ff.

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young man, and his deceitful plot to bring him low. Masaniello, on the other hand, is always authentic. He desires his people’s benefit, and fears that his life shall soon be over, but this does not stop him. He is human, but can surpass his limits. Such was the nature of heroes. In one scene, total fantasy, before the visit to the palace, the author has him give an emotional monologue: “I am the liberator of the people: I am Masaniello, the awesome Masaniello who tomorrow must discuss the fate of Naples with a great lord of Spain, with the viceroy […]. But I feel that a great weight is bearing down on my shoulders, I feel that this meeting of mine with the viceroy, this trip of mine to the palace gives me bitter grief.” Readers are invited to share his anxieties and revel in his successes. The play clearly wants to stir up passions that might perhaps oppose a tyrannical government. In this version too, Masaniello changes, once more due to poison, after sniffing “a bouquet of flowers” offered by the viceroy, with the complicity of dottore Genoino, a perfidious confidant, as he is in all the romantic literature.35 “He kisses the flowers many times and puts them in his bosom – Genoino and the viceroy exchange complicit glances.”36 Here, too, it falls to Salvatore Rosa to grasp what is afoot. He is painting Masaniello by torchlight while recounting how he, Salvatore, has defeated the Germans, when he suddenly Masaniello exclaims: “Yes, yellow, the colour of gold: gold is what princes wear; with gold they govern peoples. I am the master of Naples, yes, yes, companion, make sure that yellow triumphs.”37 Later, in the presence of his friend stricken almost to death, the artist intuits: “What a man both dead and not dead, my companions; we should all weep! Here is hidden a terrible enigma. Our liberator, our Masaniello, has gone off his head. Javarone was right: this trip to the palace has ruined Masaniello.” Even Rosa, the wife, realizes that he has been poisoned. And this is the truth to remember: Masaniello was a victim of the Spaniards: he had not lost his mind. At the play’s finale, the people also learns the truth and thus participates more intensely in his end.38 The death of the Capopopolo, we see here, has again become an event both tragic and politically productive.39 35 De Virgilii, Dramma storico, pp. 172 ff. 36 Ibid., pp. 171–172. 37 Ibid., p. 190. 38 Ibid., p. 219. 39 A French scholar has noted that the death of a hero produces community as “the beneficiaries of the sacrifice”: “These mechanisms are especially well adapted to the nation, for at least three reasons: it needs to appear as a transcendant instance of foundation for politics and civic duties; it must exist as a pre-state community, and thus requires sentiments of belonging logically anterior to those that lay down a nationality, or citizenry, def ined by laws […]”: Jean-Pierre

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8. 1848 In 1847, in Lille, a member of the French Left, Alexandre Ledru Rollin, speaking of Italy and of its difficulty in freeing itself from the foreigners, summoned up memory of the Neapolitan hero (as translated into English by Friedrich Engels): “Let her remember Masaniello!”40 That same year, at Livorno, there was published another Masaniello play, by Raffaele Nocchi, a work very much akin to De Virgilii’s. 41 There, a novelty, vis-à-vis the other stage plays, is the greater space conceded to persons who had betrayed the people, like Genoino and the duke of Maddaloni. The author wants their treachery, an inglorious choice, to seem profoundly damaging. Watch what Genoino says in an early scene. He has barely finished pushing the people to rise, when he asks himself why he did so, and realizes that it was only his own vanity: What is moving me like this, almost fatally? Only love for this people? No, because I do not want to be a victim […]. Is it hatred for the oppressors? […] Or also desire to remake myself in these last years after the twenty-two I suffered in prison, and uselessly? […] In fact, it is love for myself alone… or at least, is that the first thing that moves me? […] All these causes at one and the same time: which is the greater, which the lesser, what use is there in inquiring? In truth, I would never know how to give an account of myself to me, as the magnanimous defender of the oppressed. 42

The Duke of Maddaloni is more dangerous than Genoino because he can lure young women into traps. Pretending to be nobody special, he has seduced Nella. When she discovers that her lover was the man he was, the woman falls ill and dies. In all else, the play is patently akin to De Virgilii’s. Here, too, Salvator Rosa is at Masaniello’s side. He writes songs, paints, and battles the viceroy’s troops. 43 After his friend’s death, he seems his ideal heir. At Masaniello’s funeral, he and the other artists of the Compagnia della Morte Albert, “Du martyr à la star. Les métamorphhoses des héros nationaux,” in Pierre Centilivres and Daniel Fabre-Françoise Zonabend, La Fabrique des Héros (Paris: Édition de la Maison des Sciences de l’homme, 1998), pp. 11–32. 40 Friedrich Engels, “Reform Banquet at Lille. Speech of M. Ledru-Rollin,” in Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx, Collected Works (London-Moscow: Lawrence & Wishart, 1950), pp. 392–395. 41 Raffaello Nocchi, Masaniello (Lucca: Tipografia Benedini di L. Guidotti, 1847), p. 15. 42 Ibid., p. 16. 43 Ibid., p. 37.

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vow to honour his memory by fighting the foreigners: “Oh fisherman, we take from you an augury of life and virtue that will never die on account of foreigners’ lordship.” Then, all present sing a hymn penned by Salvator himself. Affranto dimentico È il vecchio leone; È rotto, pieghevole Al basto e al bastone; Lo tengono al buio Che l’unghie non vegga, Gli danno ad intendere Che in piè non si regga; Ma l’unghie rispuntano, Ritorna il ruggito, E in un giorno sia giovine Chi or’è rimbambito Scrollata l’ignavia D’ignobile età, L’or vivo cadavere Di nuovo sarà. LA BANDA DELLA MORTE.

Exhausted I forget / it is the old lion; / he is broken, bent to the burden of the saddle and the stick; they keep him in the dark; lest he see his claws/ and make him believe / that he cannot stand on his feet; But the roar and claws come back/ and one day let let him become young / who now is reduced to babyhood / shaken off the disgrace / of ignoble age, / the present corpse / will be alive again. LA BANDA DELLA MORTE It is a hymn to Young Italy, Mazzini’s exile movement, or also for a “young Italy” that is opposed to an old Italy represented by old Genoino, well aware but prone to compromise. The hymn explicitly uses Mazzinian symbols: it was Mazzini who labelled the people a “lion.” For example, in his brief text, Ai Giovani. Ricordi (1848), he writes: “the lion, the people, shook itself and roared. It roared spontaneously, trusting its own power. And its roar was such that the Austrians, frightened, trembling, lay low in the fortresses. The victory was consummated when Charles Albert [king of Savoia], so

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as not to tumble from the throne, slipped across the Ticino [to attack the Austrians].”44

9. Masaniello from the Opposing Side Ferdinand, Naples’s king, conceded the keenly desired constitution on 29 January 1848, but, as is well known, his deed calmed few spirits. Some pro-Bourbon writers had recourse once more to Masaniello, to convince readers to cease their protests. On a broadside they distributed, appears the following text: Masaniello da ll’auto Munno Scrive a Lo Popolo Napoletano … Masaniello, from the Other World, writes to the Neapolitan people: Io fui, so ducient’anne Ch’a Napole levaie La somma ch’era assaje De Dazie ‘mveretà. I was, two hundred years ago When, at Naples they levied The sum, great indeed it was Of Dazio taxes, truth be told. Ma tanno fui sbagliata La cosa, ‘nfede mia, Volendo arrasso sia! Accide e sacchià.[ But it was so misbegotten this affair, upon my faith, 44 Mazzini, Opere. At the end of March, the troops of the kingdom of Sardinia crossed the Ticino to invade Austria’s Lombard-Venetian territories: Piero Pieri, Storia militare del Risorgimento (Turin: Einaudi, 1962), p. 169.

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wishing it to be far away, They killed and sacked.[ Tu mo non fa lo stesso, Ma miette attenzione Ca na Costituzione Cchiù meglio te fa sta You, don’t do the same thing now, But do take note For a Constitution Sets you up better Lo Rrè te ll’ave data De core veramente, E ‘nfino a ccà sente Strellare e grallià … The king has given it to you From the heart truly And so far all he hears Is shouting and wailing45

In another poem in the Neapolitan language, A Masaniello, although the Capopopolo does not speak, the poem asks the reader to listen to him. Ebbiva Masaniello, Strellammo chiatto, e tunno, Si da chill’auto Munno Ncè vene a consiglià. Viva Masaniello We shouted fat and round So that from the Other World He is coming to confer with us. 45 This poem is in Benevento, Biblioteca Provinciale, Mellusi, XLII 289 (46). A signature at the bottom, “E.P.,” suggests that it is by Emmanuele Palermo, who had been a very critical witness of the 1799 revolution and was a likely foe of the Mazziniani. The Masaniello pages are mentioned in Fogli volanti di Napoli e Sicilia del 1848–’49, edited by Salvatore Vitale (Rome: Istituto Poligrafico dello Stato, 1956), notes 11 and 15.

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Nchiuccammence Fratielle Chello che nc’ave ditto, Sentenno a isso schitto Bona nce venarrà. Just be mindful, brothers Of what he has told us If you heed him only Good will come of it. De nuje si sé ricorda Doppo de’ ducient’anne, Fuimmo li malanne, E stammolo assenti Of us, one remembers After 200 years That we were scoundrels And let’s hear him46

We have no other evidence of a Bourbon Masaniello: in reality, the Neapolitan Capopopolo was the symbol of the Mazziniani. Just after the failed Neapolitan anti-royal barricades of 15 May 1848, in Novara a sui generis historical tale emerged, Masaniello. Cenni storici [Masaniello. Historical Notices], by Antonio Rusconi.47 It treats the Neapolitans as having just comported themselves as “Italians.” Its rhetoric was incendiary. It was possible to win; this time they had not succeeded, but their effort gave grounds for hope. The reference to the events of 1848 is explicit: Milan, with five days of fights and union acquired a century of admiration, and, with the blood of a few of its sons, one hundred thousand avengers, if it will be wise in the choice of its best advantage. Naples, which had to consider its very being [esser suo] when it had in hand the will to do so, should have erected a gallows and hauled up there in view of the whole world the traitor Bourbon bathed in the blood of infinite victims, and fattened by the fruits of the citizen’s sweat-labour: Naples should have 46 Anon., A Masaniello, Benevento, Biblioteca Provinciale, Mellusi, E XLIII 289 (25). The text is signed “D.C.” but written in the fashion of the other poem by “E.P.” (Emmanuele Palermo). 47 Antonio Rusconi, Masaniello. Cenni storici (Novara: Tipografia Nazionale Rusconi, 1848), p. 2.

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been transported to Palermo and Palermo to Naples; then one would not hear the lugubrious dirges, one would not be reading the doleful legends of the scenes that, day in, day out, are repeated as in a theatre of slaughter within its walls, and the tears of the brothers will be spared. Nonetheless, Neapolitans, you carried on like generous-spirited persons, you acted Italian.

The author alludes here to the repression of the uprising at the hand of royal troops. But what had Masaniello to do with this? Hear Rusconi: True it is that when the head of the serpent that stalked you, with your death in mind, was beneath your foot, you were constrained to press it, crush it, burn its remains and strew their ashes on the Tyrrhenian waves, and entrust them to the winds blowing from the Austral South; but now that the deadly snake once more has raised its head and spewed the venom of its rage, it behooves us to renew the scenes of Masaniello! Renew them! As in that benighted age, when tyranny was more pleasing to your nobles than was sustaining you. Join ranks as in a serried phalanx, and may the thundering of brasses be the harmony that kindles you and incites you to vendetta. Blood wants blood; not to carry on the work to which you once laid hand will render you forever unhappy, the vile object of derision for all of Europe. 48

So, here was an invitation to “renew the scenes of Masaniello,” to join united in revolt. The forceful language is justified by what had just happened in the streets of Naples. Here is an eyewitness account of that dire day. The first barricade was broken by cannon rounds. Some hundreds of Swiss [soldiers] died. By cannon barrage the nearby houses were demolished, from within which the Civic Guard were defending themselves. In came that band of Barbarians [the pro-Bourbon troops], committing unspeakable horrors: children hurled from windows, rapes, murders; in sum, all the horrors of a sack; there was no respect for age, sex, condition, not even for Nation, for many English and French were killed. The Lazzari with the king’s flag carried out the most loathsome vendettas, robbing for all they could […]. 49 48 Ibid., p. 9. 49 Il 1848 a Napoli. I protagonisti, la città, il Parlamento (Naples: La Provincia di Napoli, 1993), notes 1–6, p. 138.

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Note this last point: the “Lazzari” were still, as in 1799, of the party of the king. They were the problem of Naples, and no one knew how to solve it. Rusconi’s Cenni storici were a first reaction. To answer the Bourbon repression, the Mazziniani contrived a language that invited the Neapolitans to be mindful of their ancestor, and to carry out his enterprise: the liberty of Naples from the Bourbons. To make the Capopopolo seem to think in such terms, Rusconi places him right in the midst of that terrible 15 May. Here is a sample of his colourful account: Meanwhile, with his hair all tousled, his furious eyes afire, panting and spitting rage, there comes a misfortunate soul. His brow was sculpted desperation, his teeth hammered one another: Tommaso! Tommaso! […] Holy God! Then he issues a lament more terrible than what the forest hears from a tiger whose cubs are stolen: God of Justice! Are your thunderbolts flagging, is your justice finished? Who now will sustain an enfeebled old man, a wife who moans from hunger, a family that has no more tears to shed, turned by grief to stone?

Finally, Rusconi lets him speak: “All night long I sweated,” Tommaso adds, “my net’s yield was stingy, and the small fruit of my labours sufficed to feed only me and my family. Having eaten nothing for two days they show me their dimmed eyes and ask for bread. And they reproach the life that they have given me, and they tear me with their many sobs. I fetch out the fruit of my labours, and offer it to the hungering, and their brows begin to soften, when, behold, the door slams open, and two men with proud scowls come to rummage in my poverty […].”50

Soon, the police arrive and he must flee. The cops! The cops! A by-stander shouts and at once the others flee. They abandon the desperate Aniello, who bites his lower lip until it bleeds, seeing the cowardice of those who a short while ago had sworn the country’s welfare upon a cross. He does not let them pass, one hand clenched around his belt, eyes stern. A cop steps forward, scans Tommaso Aniello from head to foot, and, as if seeking a cause behind the young man’s look, muttering between the teeth, he glares at him, sneering scorn 50 Ibid., p. 12.

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and blood. Tommaso won’t put up with it: just as a lion springs upon his prey, he leaps, grabs him by the throat, and, dagger suddenly in hand, drives it deep into the chest. Die! […].

Masaniello was a lion who pounced and bit the throat. The feline, an animal strong and majestic, had to kill that creature of cold blood, slippery and astute, that “serpent,” symbol of the Bourbons.51 The identification of Masaniello with the people, lazzari, not yet assured, is here clear. One refers to the other, in a scenario with a few, simple figures engaging the forces in play. Finally, Rusconi grants the Capopopolo a speech in which he incites to combat, and also speaks of “Italians”: “O are we Italians, or not? If we are, this must be our thought: that we are born to dominate, not to serve, to make laws from the Alpine peaks to the subject nations, not to receive them.”52 Masaniello’s new identity was the fruit of an intensive labour that also targeted, if less intensely, other heroes of the people. These “Tribunes” or “Gracchi,” as learned authors called them, included Michele di Lando (civic leader during the Florentine Ciompi rebellion), Cola di Rienzo, Balilla (Giovannino Perasso, young son of a fisherman, who, in 1746, defended Genoa against the Austrians), Ciceruacchio (faithful friend and, in 1849, Roman follower of Garibaldi), all defined as “the Italians.”53 Rusconi points out that these heroes had been distributed, at the strategic nod of Providence, across the peninsula: “Nowadays, not to agitate is a sign of lack of heart. But is there no one to dare to put an end to so many acts of violence, to avenge so many atrocities? Heaven, that gave a Balilla to Genoa, a Michele di Lando to Florence, a Cola di Rienzo to Rome, provided unhappy Naples with its liberator, Masaniello!”54 51 Also Garibaldi was portrayed with leonine traits, in both aspect and action, as we read in Paul Ginsborg, “Romanticismo e Risorgimento. L’io, l’amore e la nazione,” in Storia d’Italia, Annali 22. Il Risorgimento, edited by Alberto Maria Banti and Paul Ginsborg (Turin: Einaudi, 2007), p. 58; he has the same traits in the extraordinary work of Lucy Riall, Garibaldi: Invention of a Hero (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007); the 2007 Italian edition of my book came out in the same year as these two volumes. I quote more recent bibliography especially around the theme popolo/plebe in D’Alessio “Masaniello durante il Risorgimento,” Il Risorgimento, vol. LXVI (1), 2019: 29–71. 52 Ibid., p. 15. 53 The collection of nationalist myths began quite early; it was shared by many diverse authors who had in common support for the Italian cause: the well-known Jules Zeller published in Paris: Épisodes de l’Histoire d’Italie, par J. Z., professeur a la Faculté des Lettres d’Aix, Les Vespres Siciliennes – Nicolas Rienzi – La Prise de Rome par le connétable de Bourbon – Masaniello et le duc de Guise (Paris: L. Hachette et C.ie, 1856). Carlo Rusconi wrote I tribuni: Masaniello, Cola di Rienzi, Ciceruacchio, Michele di Lando, Balilla (Rome: Edoardo Perino Tip. Edit., 1890). 54 Ibid., p. 23.

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And at Naples? Under censorship, utter silence? Not at all. In 1848, before or after 15 May, a professor of architecture, Giovanni Garruccio, published a story: Il Masaniello, ossia memorie storiche sulla rivoluzione di Napoli dell’anno 1647. This story, it is clear, was written under censorship. Towards the viceroy, the author is very prudent; indeed, he attributes the many gabelle that bedevilled the city not to him but to the ministers: “Meanwhile, finding all the merchandise weighed down by burdens, those scoundrels induced the viceroy to put a new gabella on fruit and vegetables too.”55 Moreover, it is not the viceroy who plots Masaniello’s harm, but Genoino. This twist suggests to us that a correspondence between viceroys and the Bourbons was common coin. Notably, even this author also joins the chorus of voices in Masaniello’s favour: “an extraordinary man, born of the most obscure origin, but endowed with a spirit and rare intellectual superiority, he might have transmitted his name to a not-unworthy posterity, had he been able to conjoin to his natural talents opportune instruction or skill [l’arte].”56

10. The Masaniello of the Democrats Also in 1848, there came out the three-volume novel by Giovanni la Cecilia Il Masaniello o la rivoluzione di Napoli nel 1647 (Livorno) and the historical play by Giovanni Sabbatini, Masaniello. Dramma in cinque atti (Turin), a volume with abundant illustrations in the style of Francesco Gonin, the Turinese painter and the illustrator of Manzoni’s 1840 Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed). La Cecilia is known to scholars for several texts very critical of the Bourbons; let us review his career. Born in Naples in 1801, in 1821 he joined the Carbonari. In 1829, he was in touch with Mazzini at Livorno, where the latter had gone to launch the Indicatore livornese, and then, as he wrote in a letter, he rejoined him at Marseilles to set up Giovine Italia: And, because I was one of the writers of the journal that represented it, and the technical director, alone among all the collaborators Mazzini and I signed our articles: on that account ills befell me: Del Carretto [head of the Bourbon police] imprisoned and abused my father, and terrified my mother, so that within seven months they died; my patrimony was 55 Ibid., p. 23. 56 Ibid., p. 275.

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stripped away. Mazzini denounced to Europe the assassination of my innocent parents.57

Mazzini likely turned to La Cecilia, a vivacious and able writer, to confront in cultural terms the Naples problem. We know that among the sources for Mazzini’s account of the revolution of Naples, quoted above, was La Cecilia’s La République Parthénopéenne (Tours, 1834). In his Masaniello, most likely written after the Neapolitan events of May, La Cecilia in turn gives signs of sharing some of Mazzini’s ideas. The writer had shortly before been in combat, on 15 May. Luigi Settembrini (scholar, liberal, long a prisoner of the Bourbons) saw him in Naples at dawn that day. I arise, I hear a dull racket. “What is it?” Last night they made barricades. I take up a rifle, which I had at home, and go out. In front of the Palazzo d’Angri, in Via Toledo, I run into Giovanni La Cecilia, who is smoking and trailing a Turkish sabre; I ask him, “What is going on here?” “Don’t you see? The revolution.” “But what revolution?” He went off, and did not answer me, and perhaps, to him, it seemed silly.58

More than the other accounts or plays written till then, La Cecilia’s novel (to pass to another genre) was born of his sharing fully Mazzini’s appeal, in the matter of the Neapolitan people: the thing to do was not to belittle it (by “people” one meant the lazzari too), but to understand it and involve it. That La Cecilia had these goals in mind emerges clearly from his musings at the start of the novel’s chapter 24. Assorted histories narrate that the Neapolitan people, as a consequence of such rapid events owing to the mobile and inconstant nature of all people, had first adored and then toppled its idol, Masaniello d’Amalfi. History has lied. A misbegotten destiny had weighed for centuries on the poorer classes of society; it wished not only to contest any generous 57 Letter of 26 August 1879 to Martino Speciale, segretario generale at the Ministero dell’Istruzione Pubblica, conserved at the Museo del Risorgimento, busta CCXLIX–56, cited in Ruggero Moscati, “Giovanni la Cecilia e le sue memorie,” in Il Mezzogiorno d’Italia nel Risorgimento, ed altri saggi (Messina-Florence: G. D’Anna, 1953), p. 139; see also Giuseppe Monsagrati, “La Cecilia, Giovanni,” in DBI, vol. 63, 2004, pp. 25–29; for Cecilia’s decisive role at Naples before 15 May, see Tommaso Pedio, Lotte politiche e contrasti sociali nella Napoli del 1848 (Matera: Montemurro Editori, 1978), pp. 260 ff.; La Cecilia had some credit among the people in Naples, on account of his Carbonaro past: see Mellone, Napoli 1848, pp. 259 ff. 58 Luigi Settembrini, Ricordanze della mia vita, Napoli, 1879–1880, in Il 1848 a Napoli, p. 139.

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action of theirs, but also, with hands full, to heap them with reproach, calumnies, and accusations.59

One must therefore rewrite history, lest the people be once more defeated, this time in their reputation.60 But let us turn to the novel, a series of interlocking stories: in one, the protagonist is Masaniello’s faithful friend, Salvator Rosa. Principessa Sanz, widow of the prince beheaded in 1640,61 invites Rosa to find her in the countryside outside Naples: she hopes to spur his spirit and convince him to return to his fatherland to help the people free itself from the foreigner. The dialogue of these two has extraordinary importance for the novel. The crux is “the little people.” Salvator Rosa, now disappointed, is reluctant to embrace the cause the widow backs, so convinced is he that the plebs would never follow the patriots. This was precisely the idea that Mazzini feared: the attitude that could, as it had before, once more impede the union necessary for achieving the central objective. The noblewoman contests firmly Rosa’s position, defending the “lesser people”: they are, rather, the repository of ancient virtues, now vanished elsewhere (this is a conception akin to the one Mazzini had expressed for his “humble ones”). She says: In their miserable condition, that lesser people are those who have power, and they will lend a hand to throw down the tyranny. In them there still is loyalty, love for neighbour, in sum the treasure of the banished virtues, far from the courts, banished far from the palaces of the great, from the merchant’s shop, from the studio of the notary or the lawyer, banished even from the sanctuary. I, now poor and a beggar, I participated in the griefs of the plebs, and, believe me, the spirit of the lowest of the lazzari is considerably nobler than that of a duke or of a prince. The delights of the plebs are affection for their spouses, tenderness for their children, constancy in love, and in the matrimonial knot: pleasures and duties unknown to lords and rich folk. You will not see, in a humble room, sitting 59 Ibid., vol. II, p. 157. 60 For Mazzini’s commitment and seriousness in this matter of redeeming the reputation of the lower class of Naples, see Giuseppe Galasso, Da Mazzini a Salvemini. Il pensiero democratico dell’Italia moderna (Florence: Le Monnier, 1974), pp. 83–84; more recently, see Luigi Mascilli Migliorini, “Il Risorgimento,” in Giuseppe Galasso and Luigi Mascilli Migliorini, L’Italia moderna e l’unità nazionale (Turin: UTET, 1998), pp. 597–640. 61 The prince, who held the fief of Sanza, contrived a plan to drive the Spaniards from the Kingdom. He was put to death at the behest of Viceroy Medina on 15 January 1640: see “Orefice, Giovanni,” DBI, by Elisa Novi Chavarria, vol. 79 (2013).

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by the bed of someone ill to death, the brother or the nephew or the son feigning grief, but with joy at heart […].

At last, before the woman’s arguments, Salvator Rosa gives in: “in substance, his ardent hatred wanted it, and his inner nature, all bile, all fire, often took fire at the least outrage done to the name of Italy, and he swore to avenge it one day, whether for love of its well-being [suo decoro] or for love of the fatherland.”62 Although La Cecilia does not confront in these pages the lazzari problem, he does so farther on. For him, as for Colletta, author of a Storia del reame di Napoli that “served to instruct and inflame the new generation,” the lazzari were seen as a phenomenon not natural but historical. They were what the Bourbon kings, seeking consensus, had desired, and wanted them to be.63 Rather than stopping to ponder the violence of which they were capable, it was better to enlist them in one’s own battles. Accordingly, at the moment of Masaniello’s death, La Cecilia does not, like many others, stress the volubility of the plebs: “And history should stress: this night [was] fatal to the regeneration and the independence of the Neapolitans, for which the blame and infamy should fall on the true traitors, and not on the people, who were tricked and sold.”64 The truth, for him, was that Masaniello’s death gave the viceroy joy. “The viceroy received with indescribable joy the head of that man whom he had called his son, his friend, and he contemplated the bruised brow, on which he once impressed a kiss of peace, thinking that death had cancelled it and washed it with blood.” The other stories that make up the novel make clear the natures both of the “foreigner” and of the collaborators, beginning with the one about the Arcamone family. The life of this modest family (widowed mother and her offspring, one girl, one boy) changes without warning at the caprice of Ametrano, a bandit under the viceroy’s protection. The man sets eyes on young Angela, unrequited; this so enrages him that, finally, one day he bursts in and rapes her. His henchmen, meanwhile, molest the aged mother. Crushed, the women try to think their way to recourse. “And the laws, the judges?” the daughter, still little inured to life, asks her mother. 62 Giovanni La Cecilia, Il Masaniello o la rivoluzione di Napoli nel 1647 (Livorno: G. Antonelli, 1848), 3 vols., vol. I, p. 50. 63 Ibid., ch. XIII, p. 130. Benedetto Croce, Storia del regno di Napoli, edited by Giuseppe Galasso (Milan: Adelphi, 1992), pp. 307 ff, where Croce calls Colletta “The Giannone of new times, adapted to new times.” 64 Ibid., pp. 99, 117.

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“In Naples, long since, there are neither laws nor judges, and all that remains of them is their name. Were we to appear before the courts, I would be derided, and, from the start, you would be in jeopardy of other, graver insults.” “But the Visitatore of the Kingdom?” “The Visitatore of the Kingdom is Ametrano’s protector.” “The viceroy?” “How would we ever manage to speak to the viceroy? That road is open only to nobles or to those who come bearing sumptuous gifts. Every other person, far from reaching him, comes up against the halberd points of those who guard him.”

The dialogue shows that one has no chance of redemption, if dominated by a tyrant. Note here how this story brought back the theme of women, offended under foreign rule; the Masaniello texts show how this was much debated. The women were urged to be on their guard: tyrannical rule signif ied violence on every level. Clearly, Captain La Cecilia asked women for meaningful support in the Risorgimento’s struggles. In doing so, he was again well aligned with his mentor, Mazzini, who entrusted to women the task of being “inspirers of magnanimous deeds and generous feelings.”65 The behaviour of a fruit vendor, Francesca di Lieto, protagonist of another of the stories that enrich the novel, is clearly meant to teach a lesson. The woman is in the market when a Spaniard passes and strokes her cheeks, as if he had rights not only over the territory, but also over its inhabitants. But Francesca does not accept the aggressor’s violence. Instead, she grabs his head and plunges into a basket of fruit. While her friends applaud, the woman exclaims, “Take note that here the women are worth more than the men. Oh, if everyone were boiling inside as much as me for the shame of obeying foreigners, perhaps, perhaps!”66 But the Spaniards are swift to take revenge (as the Bourbon troops had been on 15 May): “those monsters threw far back those poor things [daughters of the market women], who fell to the paving stones, so that they broke their bones, and tore their flesh, from which poured blood that mixed with that lost by their suffering mothers.” The event spurs Francesca, when the revolt breaks out, to join Masaniello, with a following of hundreds of women: “we have come to offer you the arm of three hundred woman who have sworn, like you, to prove to you that it 65 Ibid. 66 La Cecilia, Il Masaniello, vol. II, p. 105.

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is not only the men in this town who detest the Spaniard and who want to drive him off or perish.”67 Masaniello seems to be the Capopopolo we know, as the nineteenth century portrayed him. But the work stresses that, besides being hostile to the Spaniards, he is also a precious advisor. In the first scene that sees him in action, he goes with Giuseppe Palumbo to call upon a friar outside the city. Salvator Rosa, now keen to fight the foreigners, has also just come there. Once they meet, the “fishmonger” – as he is called in the novel – knows, thanks to his humble origins, better than any how to involve the people. I am only an ignorant person, who is speaking to men who have studied in the books. But God granted me sense enough to see what it takes to gain our goal. It seems to me that, right now, we have to have a single purpose, to chase the Spaniard off. We cannot achieve it without raising the people in revolt. And now, to get the people to rise, only two words will do! […] Listen. A new tax was just added to so many others, and it is the heaviest of them all, the more generally detested. These words: Down with the fruit tax! Down with the government that imposed it! Let’s use them as a rallying cry, and the insurrection will explode, I am sure of it; and at the first clash the power of our masters will be turned to dust.68

As for Mazzini, for La Cecilia the secret for involving the people was in the people itself, and thus in Masaniello, in Michele “‘o Pazzo,” and on other plebeian chiefs. The “intellectuals” must therefore pay them heed, if they hoped to stir them to rising and to battling to the whole fatherland’s advantage. Who this fishmonger might be is spelled out later, in a new portrait that adopts the physical traits and fine gifts attached to him by de Lussan: Handsome of face, of very robust complexion, ardent in spirit, of good manners, the bloom of youth, the spirited speech, a certain good look and grace defines his whole person. It had endeared him to the plebs with which he habitually spent his time, being by trade a fishmonger, and he was accepted by men of better condition, in whose houses he went in the practice of his work. For this reason, he knew many things: and that knowledge, conjoined with his natural ardour, was the reason why he had a longer view of things, and, without knowing why or how, he felt certain stimuli from inside himself, which bore him to things higher than the 67 Ibid. 68 Ibid., vol. III, p. 10.

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base estate in which he had been born and raised. He had a following in the plebs and was, without fear, respected[…].

His family is a small cell of that class, the popolo minuto, the lesser folk, of whom Principessa Sanz had spoken. It is far from that troubled family that the seventeenth-century English playwrights had attributed to him. It is extremely poor but ethically intact. The novelist enters its abode to show how it behaved and to show tyranny’s ill effects (as on the Arcamone family). Berardina has been imprisoned (here her name is Beatrice, a name that, if not homage to Mazzini, a passionate Dante reader, was anyhow a good deal more “Italian” than Berardina).69 As he has no money to bail out his wife, Masaniello invites the gabella officer to go to his dwelling and carry off whatever he desires. There, however, only the beds are of any worth, so the official does not hesitate to order his men to take them. Masaniello feels sorely for his mother and her children: “My mother! Forgive me; you will lie on my body, and the children on the ground.”70 And in the wake of this grief, so fully depicted, he intuits how this is all the foreigners’ fault: On his feet at dawn, distressed beyond measure, with his mind full of the anguish of that dreadful night, he set out to look after his affairs: and little by little, beginning to ruminate on these events, more than ever he was convinced that it was necessary either to die, or to defeat tyranny. He understood that neither Valenza nor the second-hand seller was the author of his woes, but the government, and the foreigners.71

In the tale of what came next, La Cecilia notes both the good decisions, as did de Lussan, and the bad ones, as few had done till now. It had been an error, for example, to allow the Duke of Arcos to flee on the revolt’s first day. Better to have put him to death. “The death of Ponce de León would have put the Spaniards, without direction, without heads, without defence, into the hand of the people, and rallied the nobility to their cause. When the life of Ponce de León was spared, and the defence was organized, intrigues, seductions, means of every sort were put to use.”72 La Cecilia, an inveterate Carbonaro, knew that one eliminated a tyrant with violence, and that the diabolical arts of the powerful ended only with their lives’ extinction. 69 70 71 72

Ibid., vol. III, p. 10. Ibid., p. 103. Ibid., p. 108. Ibid., p. 42.

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Moreover, for La Cecilia, Masaniello’s decline, for which every author to date had given a different explanation, owed to an alteration of his mind: “Modern psychology calls this kind of madness a ‘mystery,’ which acts upon the soul from the organs […]. From the morning of 13 July on, Masaniello gave signs of the illness that beset him; first, he tore his rich clothing, and put back on his fisherman’s habit; he blurted incoherent words, and finally he gave contradictory, barbarous orders.”73 Also entirely “political” is the play by Giovanni Sabbatini, Masaniello. Dramma in cinque atti (Turin, 1848).74 The author, in an interview, presented it as a mirror of events on the peninsula. Felice Romani, head of the Gazzetta Piemontese, reported his words. In that revolution we see all the elements of the conflicts that today are agitating Italy and all of Europe; and I, in my Dramma, endeavoured to put those conflicts in full light, I have even tried to have them offer the people a spectacle instructive for their work of regeneration. The viceroy of Naples represents the blind force of conquest and despotism; the barons the contumely of the privileged castes; Masaniello the moral force of the true and the honest that develops in the nation, and then changes with the excess of his passions; the archbishop represents that same moral force that remains unaltered and undamaged when it is protected by the holiness of religion.75

Sabbatini goes on to recount the birth of the play and its reception. He wrote it in 1846, spurred by the history itself and eyeing the courage of Masaniello, a man much more unfortunate than Cola di Rienzo: The tribune of Rome could profit from the native pride of the Roman people, from the still-living memories of ancient dominion, from the discords and ambitions of the patrician families, and from the impotence, not to say abjection into which the tiara of the pontiffs had fallen […]. The 73 Ibid., p. 114. 74 The author, born in Modena on 14 June 1809, founded l’Educatore storico in 1844 and would later found the newspapers L’Italia Centrale and Il Vessillo italiano. The Masaniello was confiscated by the Modenese ducal police. Sabbatini appears among the correspondents of Cattaneo: see Carteggi di Carlo Cattaneo, serie II, Lettere dei corrispondenti, edited by Carlo Agliati (Florence: Felice Le Monnier, 2005), vol. II, pp. 369–370. 75 Gaetano Sabbatini, Masaniello: dramma in cinque atti (Turin: Stamperia sociale degli artisti tipografi, 1848). There was a second edition (Milan, 1858). The review cited here appears among the “Memorie e documenti” at the end of Drammi storici e memorie concernenti la storia segreta del teatro contemporaneo per Giovanni Sabbatini (Turin: M. Caffaretti, 1864), vol. II, p. 318.

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fisherman of Amalfi, to the contrary, was born and raised in the swamp in which a corrupted century lies sluggish, and a nation degraded and asleep.76

Clearly, Sabbatini, with his Masaniello, wanted to contribute to Italy’s unification. What he says about the first performance, at Modena in 1848, is striking: I offered to put on my Masaniello for the benefit of the soldiers of the national guard, who had no means to buy themselves uniforms. This thought of mine, to consecrate to the fatherland a work with a patriotic theme written in a time of servitude, was welcome, and my friends, and colleagues who loved plays offered to reinforce the company so that the play could be staged in its entirety. The commander of the Piedmontese batallion put his soldiers at my dispostion for the staging; Signor Luigi Maglietta, a veteran choreographer, was willing to direct and arrange the stage to give good stage effect to the most important scenes of the play; and finally the musicians of the orchestra said they would lend their labour for free, to help me in my beneficent undertaking.77

Still, in Modena, the play was not very well received. The fault was not the subject, as later productions, in Turin at a time not given, fared far better. Alemanno Morelli, who played Masaniello, was particularly appreciated. He was truly inspired. In his enthusiasms, he was sublime, and stupendous in his rages, loveable in his expressions of conjugal affection without for an instant losing the rough, almost savage mien of a lazzarone. In the scene of his presentation to the viceroy, he managed to reconcile the clumsy with the terrifying; he made one laugh and shiver when he rejected the Order of San Giorgio, the ensign of the traitors, and when, after having ordered the people to back off, with scorn he exclaimed, “Viceroy, who of us is the greater?”78

Let us hear what else Felice Romani wrote: Conscious of all the needs of the plebs, in the midst of whom he lived and suffered, aware of all the miseries that were its heritage, and seeing 76 Comment by Felice Piemontese in Drammi storici e memorie, pp. 316–317. 77 Ibid., p. 306. 78 Ibid., p. 311.

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it blind, naked, and groaning under the weight of the taxes, like a beast of burden struggling to drag the ignoble cart, he cursed the tyranny that had reduced it to the condition of brute beasts, and from the flame of anger that devoured him in secret, he drew the spark that was needed to pour life into that inert multitude, like Prometheus […].

In this new play, Masaniello is considerably more determined and courageous than in de Virgilii’s and Nocchi’s. Here, he challenges Philip IV himself. Watch how, in the first scene, he strikes his pose: On the other side of this great sea, a man of flesh and bone, like Masaniello, wills and succeeds in a grave injustice in the distant land of Naples, because he makes thousands of men will what he wills; and Masaniello, of flesh and bone like Philip IV, could not reproach him for his injustice […]. Ha ha ha! Philip IV king and Masaniello fishmonger, always fishmonger! Philip IV is strong because a king, Masaniello will be strong because of the people. Philip IV is weak when he oppresses the peoples and Masaniello would be weak were he to bully the kings. To our positions, and we will try one another’s strength. (Act I, scene 1)

Here, too, Masaniello is the victim of a plot, in which Genoino and the viceroy are partners, but not the cardinal. The play had a strong impact: proof of this are the many reviews, which Sabbatini himself republished in a second edition.79 The reviews are rather long, and almost always positive: the literary critics and journalists, wishing to support the struggle for Italy’s freedom, wafted incense on the playwright’s labours. One sole voice stepped back from the choir: one Domenico Carutti noted that Sabbatini’s Masaniello did not match the Masaniello of the seventeenth century: Signor Sabbatini tried to depict the true Masaniello, and often succeeded, but not always. His mind took pleasure in the ideal; he is no longer the man of the seventeenth century, ignorant, without a sense of his rights, chained to the prejudices and the feudal oppressions; the man of the nineteenth century, the man who has inhaled the breath of the Constituent Assembly and of the French Revolution shows up excessively.

79 For the reviews of Sabbatini’s play, see the “Memorie e documenti,” in Drammi storici e memorie, pp. 299 ff.

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However fair, these remarks fell on deaf ears. The secret of the play’s success was its very modernity. This was not that seventeenth-century world, but that was precisely why this Masaniello pleased the current public.

11. Garibaldi at the Opera Masaniello After Pisacane’s failed anti-Bourbon invasion (1857) came a moment of profound unease. Mazzini honoured his friend in a brief writing, Carlo Pisacane, where, after remembering the young man, his character and courage, he turned to the Neapolitans and exhorted them to react and finally prove that they did not desire that tyranny that for many years the “Prophet Job people” had supported. Is there any other life stirring on your land besides that of your volcanoes? For some years now you have spread across Europe a lament that makes an ignoble impression if it does not prophesy insurrection, showing how it is legitimate: Italy’s Job People, you lay bare your wounds before all the Nations. And you do not fear that they might say: a people that suffers what these suffer is a degenerate people: he who suffers the stick, does he deserve it? I have, out of duty, exculpated ours, the men who sided with us, of the accusation of cowardice: our side, although numerous, are nevertheless always a minority. But who can exculpate an entire people. The Neapolitan people bears today one of those tyrannies that not only torment, but also dishonour. The Neapolitan army serves a system that transforms the soldier into a sbirro [vile cop] and butcher of his own brothers. Naples enjoys – more than any other part of Italy – European opinion propitious to movement, and no government, Austrian or any other, would dare combat, with weapons bared, the insurrection.80

Words that aimed to hurt, to awaken shame: did one have to flee the field? The situation changed so much in the three years between 1857 and 1860 that the peoples of the South played a major role in the preparation for the campaign of Garibaldi’s thousand. We must keep in mind the new elements in play in the f irst months of 1860. They help explain both the greater, happier trust in unification among the plebs, and the revived vitality of

80 Giuseppe Mazzini, Carlo Pisacane (1858). Ricordi, in Mazzini, Opere, vol. II, p. 629.

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the Masaniello myth, which advanced in remarkable step with the political efforts. What happened? The defence of Rome [of 1849], the campaign of the Cacciatori delle Alpi ten years later were conjoined with the South American adventures to cast around Garibaldi a glow, if not yet a definition, of “Hero of Two Worlds.” And, even in 1846, when he first adopted it, the red shirt was a symbol of a tradition of combat and of heroism which found in it a flag as picturesque as it was suggestive, and familiar in any place where there was the least shred of political information, be that flag loathed or loved. So it was not two officers who had deserted from the Austrian navy, like the heroic Bandiera brothers, nor an officer who had once served the Napoleonic army and was considered by it a deserter, like the no less heroic figure, Carlo Pisacane, but the well-known military chief of Italian patriotism and famous combatant in battles for national independence even in the far Americas who now was coming to the South to wave the flag of revolt.81

There were other things in play: the Franco-Austrian Treaty of Villafranca, by which Austria gave up Lombardy, the support that London, deeply invested in the Italian question, gave to the unification of the peninsula (we shall return to this), and, last but not least, the fact that Ferdinand II had passed the crown to his son, Francis II, to whom many denied the fealty they had granted his father. The new enthusiasm also surfaces in the newspapers founded in Naples beginning in the early 1860s. Luca Torres’s Giornali di Napoli: 1799–1861 assembles some of their mastheads: Il Tuono, a daily, was founded on 9 July. “Twelve years ago,” the director wrote, “Mazzini was seen as a visionary, who wanted an Italy united and free: now the people believe firmly in Italy’s unity and freedom soon to come. Does that not seem to you an extraordinary progress?” On 20 July, it was the turn of Il Garibaldi, which, it goes without saying, lavished gushing praise on “the hero of the people.” A brief entry, from the second issue, interests us especially, as it helps show why, on the cresting wave of enthusiasm for the enterprise, the myths of Masaniello and Garibaldi tangled. Garibaldi, it says, was “the people’s hero.” A divine hand protected him. What impelled him to risk his life was not private affection, as he had “brought his own wife into the battle’s risks,” nor ambition, for he had “given up being an admiral in America and a general in Piemonte for the good of Italy,” nor wealth, because he was “poor, extremely poor, amidst the 81 Galasso, La democrazia da Cattaneo a Rosselli, pp. 24–25.

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millions that free men of all nations offer him; his last ten thousand francs, fruit of the sale of a few plots of land at [the island of] Caprera, were used to buy arms for Sicily.” What drove him, indeed, was love for the people. This quality made people call him a new Masaniello. What the old hero had not accomplished, Garibaldi was making come true, uninterested all the while in anything except his people. The interesting point is that, from 1860 to 1890, various newspapers were founded which had the Capopopolo of 1647 in their name and in their voice. The first, it seems, was Il Masaniello. Giornale quotidiano [Daily newspaper] (Naples, 12 July 1860). On the first page it states: Behold Masaniello among you! He rises with liberty: for Masaniello and liberty are the same thing […]. Now can the name of your friend, of your defender, of your chief resurge and show itself openly. I was your beloved because honest, because a lover of our fatherland, and because just. I never had, thanks to the Madonna del Carmine, thirst for gold: gold, my brothers, corrupts a man, and makes him a tyrant over his own brothers! I was a poor fishmonger, you know it: I lived on little bread, and on water, and for this I was just: a hut was barely able to enclose me, my wife, and my little child, and for this I was just: I went dressed in rags, and for this I was just; but under my rags beat a heart that loved my fatherland, justice, honesty, virtue, and for this I was just […].

Masaniello then exhorts the Neapolitans not to take advantage of the power vacuum that had arisen: not to indulge in looting and theft, not weaken themselves wallowing in vices because the “viper” could exploit it.82 That this newspaper was founded to support Garibaldi, and to exalt Masaniello, becomes clear a few words later. After the initial remarks comes a long paean to the “liberating angel of Italy.” Indeed, the journal was founded to recount the critical months of the Garibaldian campaign. In the 19 July issue, Masaniello the “journalist” exults at the arrival of patrols of the new Garibaldian Guardia Nazionale. “Eviva! A thousand Evivas truly from the heart of my brothers. Blessed San Gennaro! The shouts of enthusiasm that you raised on seeing the long-desired Guardia Nazionale struck me, they 82 The original of this quoted passage from the journal: “Badate adunque, fratelli miei, ad esser giusti ed onesti, così solo di me vi renderete degni. I nostri nemici, e dell’Italia intera cercano che voi rubiate, che uccidiate, che commettiate delitti, affinché poscia, fatti deboli e vili dal vizio, vi potessero dare addosso come tante sanguisughe per succhiarvi il popolano povero sangue vostro; e così togliersi la lor sete infernale, siccome facevano! La vipera ancor vive, e si dibatte fino a che non le sarà schiacciato il capo.”

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moved me so much that I too, with a shout of joy, threw my little pipe and hat into the air, and I too shouted Evviva, from the bottom of my heart.” At the same time, the journal aspired to the “moralization” of its people. So, keep on, keep on, my brothers, being good and honest, and you will never again be called Neapolitan lazzari, but the civil people, the people worthy of every freedom, the honest and virtuous Neapolitan people. The outsiders who are admiring are edified, and truly full of approval, they note how you are handing things. Yes, you have shown yourselves a people so civil as to equal any other in the civil parts of Europe!

There were opinions needing rejection. A gulf to cross. That struggle for Italian unity was a new chance granted the lazzari. Were they what people said of them, or were they as capable as the civil populace of acting coherently for the common good? Finally, on 23 July, Masaniello announced (prematurely): “Sicily is finally cleared of royal troops. The citadel [at Messina] and its dependencies has surrendered.” Garibaldi entered Naples on 7 September. Many had depicted him as a hero of simple tastes. Among others, Alexandre Dumas, who had hoped to join his following, in a letter of 21 July to the Garibaldinian brigadier Giacinto Carini, had spoken of him as a new Cincinnatus, because, despite the great victories he was winning, he was humble, and ate hard bread and drank water like a poor man.83 Naples welcomed him with expansive joy, as it well knew how to do. Salvatore de Renzi, who was probably on the scene, in Tre secoli di rivoluzioni napoletani (Naples, 1866) recounts very vividly the popular enthusiasm for the hero: Garibaldi’s entry into Naples on 7 September happened at a singular moment. Barely twelve hours had gone by since the king’s departure; spirits had barely begun to calm from the fear of bombs and grape-shot; the castles, the palaces, the public places in the hands of royal troops; 83 “He was lying at the doorway, with his head resting on the saddle, undone by fatigue; he was sleeping. Next to him was his dinner, a piece of bread and a jug of water. My dear Carini, I was carried back 2500 years, and I found myself in the presence of Cincinnatus. God keep him for you, my dear Sicilians, for if adverse fate were to rob you of him, the whole world could not give you another like him.” Published in Italian as “Lettera di Alessandro Dumas al Brigadiere Giacinto Carini ispettore generale di cavalleria,” Il Garibaldi, n. 2, pp. 6–7, reprinted today in I Giornali di Napoli: 1799–1861 (Naples: Torre, 1982). For Dumas in Sicily, see Ferdinand Boyer, “Alexandre Dumas en Sicile avec Garibaldi (1860),” Archivio storico messinese, series III, vol. speciale (1957): 13 ff.

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and yet as in a dream Naples knew that Garibaldi was coming, Naples saw Garibaldi come in, on the good faith of the people, alone, and strengthened by the greatness of his name and of the immense good done. The streets were crammed with people; there was no time to put up decorations, no forced demonstration, and total spontaneity. Garibaldi’s heart had to soften, the people softened too, for whom it seemed a triumph in the ancient [Roman] fashion, when a citizen, taken from the plow to save the fatherland received the applause of the fatherland’s gratitude. Besides, Garibaldi was the idol of all, and he deserved it; he represented the power of the people, the triumph of justice and the right of humanity over usurpation by force.84

Various publishers, in and outside Naples, understood that the two myths were, indeed, superimposed: in 1860, at Naples, for the first time ever, was published the chronicle of Alessandro Giraffi, I Napolitani al 1647. Cronica di dieci giorni della Rivoluzione di Mas’Aniello corredata di annotazioni [The Neapolitans in 1647. Chronicle of Ten Days of the Revolution of Mas’Aniello furnished with annotations] (tipografia dell’Arno). In 1861, a Milanese press published the Vita di Masaniello of Cajo da Montemulliano, which concluded with the prophetic line: “We hope that Garibaldi will make the Neapolitan people too forget all its past tribulations.”85 But in the great European capitals too, 1861 saw new writings on the Capopopolo of 1647; that year, at Marseilles, there came out a monologue by François Mazuy: Masaniello. Passé et Avenir de Naples. Monologue (Marseilles, 1861). Two years later, in Paris, Charles Ribeyrolles put to press an account of the Compagnia della Morte, inserting Masaniello among its adepts.86 There was a similar reaction in London. Attention to the “Italian question” had revived, especially in circles like that of Lady Morgan, in the Forties. Franco Venturi has written: “Not only the people of letters, but also the artists contributed a good deal, even then, to give Italy a visage different from that which its oppressors seemed at the time to have impressed on it for good.” In Turner’s landscapes, Romanticism peaked, dissolving the

84 De Renzi, Tre secoli di rivoluzioni, p. 352. 85 Cajo da Montemulliano, Storia della insurrezione di Napoli nel 1647, Vita di Masaniello. Liberatore del Popolo napoletano (Milan: F. Pagnoni, 1860), p. 86. 86 Charles Ribeyrolles, Les Compagnons de la mort. Révolt de Masaniello en 1647. Précedé d’une notice sur l’auteur par F. Dabadie (Paris: Ferd. Sartorius, Libraire-éditeur, 1863): here we see that, as with Masaniello, the Compagnia della Morte was gaining attention abroad. Salvator Rosa, went the story, contacted Masaniello, knowing his patriotism.

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vision of Italy into pure dream.87 Moreover, Turner rendered homage to the Capopopolo with a painting now at the Tate Gallery, “Undine giving the Ring to Masaniello, Fisherman of Naples,” exhibited in 1846 in a London where the very presence of Mazzini helped sustain interest in Italy, perhaps particularly in a South so hard to conquer.88 And then there was the event that gives this section its heading: Garibaldi at the Opera of Masaniello, the title of an opera by Robert Nugent Dunbar (London; Robert Hardwicke, 1864), staged at the Royal Italian Opera at Covent Garden, on the occasion of Garibaldi’s London visit. Recent studies on Garibaldi offer interesting details about that tour and his great welcome: the train bringing Garibaldi to London in its final miles trundled through an enthusiastic crowd, and the city saw extraordinary steps to keep it all in hand. Every day the hero was absorbed “in dinners and banquets, visits and receptions. He meets lords, politicians, diplomats.”89 Dunbar’s play is preceded by a note: “Those who had the good fortune to be present at the Royal Italian Opera, Covent Garden, on the 14th April, 1864, will probably never forget the excitement and impressiveness of the scene. On that evening, the vast and splendid theatre seemed, as it were, the appropriate Temple of the Goddess of Liberty.” The passage noted “a considerable analogy between the careers and attributes of Masaniello and Garibaldi but that the former, after performing many gallant exploits, and being proclaimed King, was at length treacherously

87 Franco Venturi, “L’Italia fuori d’Italia,” pp. 987–1481. See also the reconstruction of the plays about Masaniello, from 1820 onwards, including George Soane’s Masaniello or the Fisherman of Naples (1825) and the enthusiastic Milner’s, Masaniello, Fisherman of Naples or Deliverer of His Country (1822), in Frederick Burwick, “Masaniello on the London stage,”, in Dante and Italy in British Romanticism, edited by Burwick and Paul Douglass (New York: Palgrave Macmillan: 2011), pp. 161–182. We should also mention the pages dedicated to Masaniello by Walter Scott, prudently faithful to the f irst printed chronicles: Villari, Elogio della dissimulazione, p. 70; D’Alessio, Masaniello durante il Risorgimento, p. 32. 88 For documents on British interest in the Italian case, see the recent article of Salvo Mastellone, “Mazzini’s International League in the Light of the London Democratic Manifestos, 1837–1850,” in Giuseppe Mazzini and the Globalization of Democratic Nationalism. Proceedings of the British Academy, 7–9 Dec. 2005, in Il Pensiero politico, XXXVIII, 3, (2005), pp. 446–453. 89 Alfonso Scirocco, Garibaldi. Battaglie, amori, ideali di un cittadino del mondo (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2001), pp. 331 ff. Scirocco then adds, concerning Garibaldi: at the theatre they give him “Norma” and the dance, “Masaniello.” The British government had supported Garibaldi. As Venturi wrote, “Byron’s widow, who died on 16 May, 1860, left 40 pounds sterling for Garibaldi in Sicily. At the time, in England as in Italy, one reaped the harvest of a quarter century of Mazzinian preaching.” See Venturi, “L’Italia fuori d’Italia,” p. 1440.

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killed in a tumult.”90 Earl Granville, a liberal statesman, wrote of Garibaldi that he was of modest origins, that he had shown great courage and great moral strength. He was a valorous warrior, a man of simple ways. His lack of guile was perhaps an absence of the slyness of a diplomat.91 Garibaldi? Masaniello? Whom did he have in mind?

12. Between Naples and Italy: A difficult Mediation After Italy’s unification, the myth of Masaniello did not flicker out. Far from it: in 1862, another Neapolitan newspaper made its appearance: Massaniello. Spassatiempo de Napole e trentaseje casale [Masaniello. Pastime of Naples and Thirty-six Casali], under the direction of Tommaso Ruffa,92 which cast light on a very dramatic state of affairs, the misery of a great part of the population.93 A similar paper was Pulcenella e Calandrino. Giornale popolare cuscenziuso e ’nsemprece de la matina [Pulcenella and Calandrino. Popular Morning Paper, Conscientious and Simple]. A quite bitter composition in the Neapolitan language appeared in an 1861 issue. It compared “before” and “after” Unification, and concluded that for lu populo nothing had changed at all. If, before, it had been hungry, now it was hungry still. New Things and Old Things What was Naples? The capital of a kingdom. And now? It is a Province. Government, before, what did it do? It lolled about, The present one, what does it do? It pretends it cannot hear. 90 For contemporary appreciation of the parallels between Garibaldi and Masaniello, see Robert Nugent Dunbar, Garibaldi at the Opera of “Masaniello” (London: Robert Hardwicke, 1864). 91 Published in Italian translation in Scirocco, Garibaldi, p. 334. 92 Ruffo was the editor of Lo Cuorpo de Napole (9 July 1859–16 May 1868), a paper that, in a time of great changes, disappointments, and debates, came out in favour of Italian unification. See Pier Antonio Toma, Giornali e giornalisti a Napoli 1799–1999, with an introduction by Antonio Ghirelli and Ermanno Corsi (Naples: Grimaldi & C., 1999), pp. 77–78. 93 Giuseppe Galasso, Tradizione, metamorfosi e identità di un’antica capitale, in Idem, Napoli (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1987), pp. xi-xiv.

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The people, before, why did it complain? Because it was dying of hunger. Now why does it lament? Because bread is expensive.94 Cose nove e cose vecchie Che era Napole? La Capitale de lu regno E mmo? È na Provincia Lu governo de primmo che faceva? Faceva l’Indiano Chisto presente che fa? Recchie de Campane. Lu popolo apprimmo pecché se lagnava? Pecché se mureva de famma Mo pecché s’allamenta? Pecché lu ppane va caro

The former of these papers, Masaniello, Spassatiempo de Napole e trentaseje casale, again played on the figure of the Capopopolo, useful for its mediating function. On its pages, Masaniello declares himself certain of the advantages of Unity, and tries to deal with the social stress, clearly stringent and newly sharpened, in the city. In the first issue (10 February, 1862),95 after stressing that one had to protect the work of Zi Peppe [Uncle Giuseppe], he responds to some complaints: a mother who asks him, what freedom is this that takes her sons for the draft? So, Masaniello asks her what she understands by freedom. To do what one wants, answers the woman; the Capopopolo tosses back, can you call it freedom too to rob and kill? No, she says , that would be against the law. Masaniello then explains that freedom is to live happily, governed by just laws. The army is necessary. “With a good troop this people makes itself respected by the other nations. For this solders are 94 These verses appear on the first four pages of the newpaper, which, unlike other papers, is reprinted in I Giornali di Napoli, 1799–1861, published by Luca Torre Editore; also published there are Spassatiempo, Masaniello. Gazzettino politico-amministrativo-sociale-artistico (I vol. 1, 21 maggio 1874): Masaniello. Giornale politico quotidiano (a. 1, Nov. 1883–85); Masaniello. Giornale del popolo napoletano (1890). 95 Primma chiacchiariata ’ntra Masaniello, e lo Popolo Napoletano, Benevento, Biblioteca Provinciale, Mellusi, XLII 289 (46): “Napole 10 frevaro 1862.”

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needed, who do not sprout like cauliflowers, but you have to make them with conscription.” In that first issue, Tommaso Ruffa also published a Vita di Masaniello in verse, all in dialect Ncopp’a lo motivo de la tarantella soja [On the Motifs of his Tarantella] in which it is not difficult to discern the influence of De Virgilii (Berardina is called Rosa, Masaniello is poisoned, and so on. In sum, an altogether nineteenth-century Life): At Amalfi Masaniello More than two hundred years ago With his father, a little oldster Was hauling on the nets. But then at Naples he swears He will marry his Rosa And love attached him and made him stay here. Ad Amarfe Masaniello, Cchiù de dujecient’anne fa Co lo patre vicchiariello, Stéa la sciaveca a tirà. Ma po a Napole juraje Rosa soja de se sposà E l’ammore l’attacajie Lo facette restà ccà […].

Looking over some of the questions put in print, we begin to understand the function of the paper that named itself after Masaniello. A mason complains that the partitari, casual labourers, earned far more than he did. A peddler protests that he had to decamp from Via Toledo, a main street, with his own sales wagon, thanks to the introduction of measures aiming to render it more elegant or to make passage easier. A sailor is disgruntled at having joined the navy because his pay is down by a third. Masaniello agrees with these “humble folk,” whose voice the paper wanted to make heard, but it does not limit itself to this. It comforts the mason, saying that the part-time workers were a “gang of profiteers” but maybe he could fix things up if he raised the matter with Napoli e 36 casali, here giving the nod to Masaniello. Spassatiempo de Napole e trentaseje casale. To the peddler, Masaniello promises instead himself to offer 33 carlini, money sufficient to rent a fixed place to sell from; perhaps the newspaper

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hoped to have funding from the readers or from some public institution. As for the sailor, Masaniello inveighs against the regime in Turin: “This is a swineish mess. The ministry of Turin has to fix these capricious actions of some greandee, who sends orders to Naples, and who should give a prize to whoever works hard for a bite to eat, and instruction, practical even! How things go better with freedom, especially for the poorest class, which is that of the sailor folk.” The paper’s editor tried in this way to mediate between Naples, its poorer sort especially, and the nation, doing his best to exploit the ever-greater capacity of the Fourth Estate, with its periodicals, to influence conditions, a power ever stronger after Unity.

13. In Honour of the Illustrious Patriot In synchrony with that attention to Masaniello, at the same time Naples hosted spectacles about the famous Capopopolo. Two operas were performed: Masaniello. Gran ballo storico diviso in sei parti (1861) by Filippo Izzo and Masaniello (date not certain) by Almerindo Spadetta. In both, the authors declare that they chose the famous Capopopolo to honour their city.96 Izzo, for his Masaniello, looked to Scribe’s opera. Indeed, we see the same story, barely changed. Fenella, not mute this time, discovers that the man who raped her was the viceroy’s son, and tells Masaniello. A very different choice, quite unlike that by the French opera, shaped Spadetta’s Masaniello.97 In the few pages of his foreword, Spadetta explains that he found it “incredible” that the French lyric theatre had its Masaniello, 96 In his comments on his opera Izzo told the public: “I will say a few words to the respectable, and courteous Neapolitan public. Love of fatherland suggested that I take as the subject of a dance an event perhaps unique in the history of peoples. Masaniello created the amazement [stupore] of all of Europe, and I, inspired by the heroic deeds of the immortal plebeian, who succeeded in negotiating with the ambassadors of France, Spain, and Germany, as he was feared and venerated by them, and who at a single nod set in motion more than one hundred fifty thousand men, I could not find for my dance a subject that might be at once more grandiose and more interesting for my fellow citizens. I do not neglect, meanwhile, to declare that to make the principle of my work as notable as possible.” I have taken this from the opera of Filippo Izzo, Masaniello. Gran ballo storico diviso in sei parti (Naples: Stabilimento tipografico del Cosmopolita, 1861). 97 For Spadetta, see Pietro Martorana, Notizie biografiche e bibliografiche degli scrittori del dialetto napoletano (Bologna: Forni, [no date]; later edition by Chiurazzi (Naples, 1865–1867), p. 387. Spadetta was born in Naples in 1822. He dedicated himself to melodrama, writing some sixty operas, among them one, published in 1847, on Pulcinella. His Masaniello. Grande opera napoletana divisa in un prologo e cinque parti, con musica di Giovanni Valente, was first published at Milan, by Stabilimento musicale di Lucca, year unknown.

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while the Neapolitan theatre had none. His own Masaniello is more Neapolitan than Scribe’s. He speaks the local tongue: “Tu si la primma ‘nfra le città / Pe te lo sango de chisto core […]” (You are the first in the city / For you the blood of this heart […]). The national Italian language, in contrast, belongs to the powerful: to Genoino, the viceroy, the nobles, the enemies of the people. We are at the beginning of a new adventure, that will progress further, in the twentieth century. In London, too, where, as we have seen, for assorted reasons the Italian problem was keenly followed, accounts of the seventeenth-century revolt were still being written. The first to appear after Italian unification was Masaniello of Naples: The Record of a Nine-Days Revolution (London 1865), by Mrs. Horace Roscoe [Jane Elizabeth St. John].98 A few words in the frontispiece suggest that, like Lady Morgan, the author was interested in the women question. She appears there as having written Life of Audobon, The Naturalist of the New World (1861) and Englishwomen and the Age (1860), a pamphlet on the female condition. In the tale that interests us here, she declares a desire to speak of the true Masaniello: “Fiction, Opera, Burlesque, and Ballet have alternately depicted him as a brigand, a stage-hero, or a buffoon.” In reality, to read her Masaniello is to feel palpably how thoroughly European Romantic models had imposed themselves. In the Capopopolo the writer sees a man endowed with ancient virtues. His nobility was not dwarfed by egotism, and he was truly great in proportion as he was unconsciously so. Uncompromising as Cincinnatus, he was bold as Marius, who has been judged less great for having exterminated the Cimbri than for having prostrated the aristocracy of Rome. Certain it is that from the time of Masaniello’s resolve, the Revolution was inevitable.99

Incorruptible and coherent, he fell because poisoned, still in the presence of Salvator Rosa. The artist and the Capopopolo were for Roscoe symbols of the peninsula’s recent struggle for liberty: The noblest intellect and the most heroic virtue in the land of Italy were dedicated to the service of liberty, when it numbered amongst its disciples 98 For Mrs. Horace Roscoe, see her entry in the Dictionary of National Biography, edited by H.C.G. Matthew and B. Harrison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 628. 99 Mrs. Horace Roscoe St. John, Masaniello of Naples: The Record of a Nine-Days Revolution (London: Tinsley Brothers, 1865), p. 76. Here, Masaniello has taken on the virtues that one literary tradition, from Staël onwards, imputed to the people of the South. See the remarks of Musi, La rivolta di Masaniello, p. 28.

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Salvator Rosa and Masaniello. Genius and patriotism were stirred by the agitation of the time to a sublime enthusiasm and eloquence, and the heart of the entire nation was kindled in irresistible response.100

14. On the Trail of the True Masaniello The creative thrust did not falter in the years to come: some emulated the writers of the Risorgimento,101 others embraced the novel, with an eye to female readers. In Masaniello. Romanzo storico popolare (Milan, 1891) by Mario Mariani, the story turns on a history of the unhappy love of the viceroy’s daughter (Maria), betrayed by a French officer and protected by the Capopopolo. Though wordy, and focused on a woman who never lived, the novel very likely found readers. It had a rival in Felicita Morandi, author of Masaniello ossia gloria e pazzia (Milan, 1898). The most interesting phenomenon of the century’s f inal years, nevertheless, was different: the first studies devoted to the discovery of the seventeenth-century Masaniello. From one rib of the Risorgimento were born the first scholarly searches for documents about his life. Salvatore De Renzi published his Tre secoli di rivoluzioni napolitane in 1866; Vincenzo Cuomo, after unification, worked on Masaniello for many years, on the pages of the journal Lega del Bene, jumping in whenever someone played Masaniello false, described him imprecisely, or depicted him with scant attention to how his contemporaries had portrayed him. A typical, and entertaining, example is a Lega del Bene article from July, 1893, where he denounced how a terracotta statue of Masaniello had been erected for the festa of the Carmine, at the Mercato: this Capopopolo had a handsome black beard and a club. Horrors! Masaniello had not a beard but a small moustache, and it was blond. And he had never carried a club.102 100 Ibid., p. 149. 101 For the Risorgimento mode, see for instance Michele Ciarlone. His Masaniello is very hostile to the “foreigner,” and is quick to curse at the Spaniards (“cani di spagnoli, hanno posto la gabella su tutto”). He is irreverent: before Navarreta, like William Tell before the official, he won’t doff his hat: “I cannot serve you, Excellence, as I suffer in the head and could catch cold, and God forbid, no head, then come woes!” He is determined to push for extreme measures – “either liberty or death!” The ballad “hail is coming, bread will fall,” sung by children who are cheering for Salvator Rosa, and many other traits suggest a very close relationship with the 1847 drama of De Virgilii treated above; Michele Ciarlone, Ricordi di Napoli. Masaniello o Napoli nel 1647 dramma storico in cinque parti (Naples: Salvatore de Angelis, 1876). 102 Vincenzo Cuomo, “La statua di Masaniello,” La Lega del Bene, VIII, n. 24, (1893), pp. 2–3.

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And then there were the scholars of the revolt: Granito the prince of Belmonte, Fiordelisi, De Blasiiis, and also Capasso, for whom especially the tensions of past years had been replaced by an affectionate sympathy for the young Neapolitan.

XVIII. Part of Naples Abstract After Italian Unification, the affair of Masaniello is studied and retold by Bartolommeo Capasso, and after him comes the massive historical work of Michelangelo Schipa, devoted to the whole revolt. With the Risorgimento now complete, Masaniello loses his recent aura of sacrality, as model to the nation. He becomes instead a Neapolitan theme, an obligatory subject for whoever hopes to specialize in the culture of the city. The works of Viviani, De Filippo, and Compagnone focus on the people of Naples. Compagnone links Masaniello to the comedy figure Pulcinella, slow to claim his rights, fogged in thought. But a different idea of Masaniello, brave and loyal, surfaces in the play by Pugliese and Porta (1974). Keywords: Capasso, Schipa, Vittorio Viviani, De Filippo, Pulcinella

1

The Plebs of Masaniello

Many texts, written from the nineteenth century’s last years to past the twentieth century’s mid-point, were marked deeply by the Masaniello essays of Capasso. La Piazza del Mercato di Napoli e la casa di Masaniello (1868) and La Famiglia di Masaniello (1875) were expanded and republished in La casa e la famiglia di Masaniello, ricordi della storia e della vita napoletana.1 Writers from Salvatore Di Giacomo to Ferdinando Russo, Aniello Costagliola, E.A. Mario, and Eduardo De Filippo, all later widely recognized as the century’s “Neapolitan authors,” evidence having read his pages and made them their own. That is what first emerges from this new wave in the fortunes of Masaniello’s myth, our subject here. The tale presents, we 1 In Capasso’s book is a third essay, “Masaniello ed alcuni di sua famiglia effigiati nei quadri nelle f igure e nelle stampe del tempo,” also cited in this book here. The three essays appear together in Capasso, Masaniello (Naples: Luca Torre, 1993), a re-edition of La casa e la famiglia di Masaniello, ricordi della storia e della vita napoletana nel secolo XVII (Naples: Giannini, 1893).

D’Alessio, S. Masaniello. The Life and Afterlife of a Neapolitan Revolutionary Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2022 doi: 10.5117/9789463721455_ch18

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shall soon see, traits profoundly different or sometimes antithetical to what arose with the Risorgimento. Masaniello becomes less national, and more “Neapolitan,” assuming ever more the traits singled out, by those who inquire into Neapolitans, as peculiar to them. All began, or rather re-began, thanks, above all, to the interest in the Capopopolo that Capasso communicated to his disciples, who often voiced touching words of praise, and gratitude for their generous teacher. See what Salvatore di Giacomo, Ferdinando Russo, and Michelangelo Schipa wrote after the scholar’s death in 1900, now republished in Masaniello. La sua vita, la sua rivoluzione (Naples, 1993). Capasso was spurred by real curiosity: where exactly did Masaniello live? Who was he? Who, physically and morally, were these plebeians who clambered onto history’s stage? With such questions, his studies roved among the seventeenth-century chronicles, sources for the great Baroque Neapolitan literature of the seventeenth century (from Sguttendio to Zito to Cortese to Basile), and among other sorts of documents – maps of the city, law codes, and so on. The result, as many have enjoyed learning first-hand, is not a dry account of discoveries logged, but pages that seem written for an historical novel in Manzoni’s mode, mixing history and invention, where history means not only the events, but also the clothing, the habits, the characters of the chief protagonists and other figures. The author’s tone is serene and captivating. Capasso brings the reader into the distant world of seventeenth-century Naples, for which, he suggests tacitly, he feels respect and affectionate curiosity. In his first Masaniello essay, the scholar lays out the place where Masaniello’s house stood, what its traits were, what role it played in those turbulent days. There men of every social station gathered; there were devised and compiled the articles to swear to; there Masaniello had appeared, seated with legs dangling; and towards that abode they tried to push the viceroy to go to see his enemy, “triumphant in his house.” In the other essay, La famiglia di Masaniello, Capasso recalls to life the moments of the Capopopolo’s baptism and his wedding, again using rediscovered papers. In neither essay did he intend to recount the history of the revolt: nevertheless, inevitably, he did so, pausing at chosen topics. Thus, unsurprisingly, in both essays the story runs fairly swiftly, even when visiting questions we know to be the most debated: Masaniello’s decline, his assassination. In his house essay, Capasso writes: But the Capitan Generale of the People no longer could abide his poor house. When the great weight of thinking, the long fasting, the abuse of

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wine, the protracted loss of sleep, and, perhaps, more than all that, the poison of adulation, by which he had been so well provided by the viceroy, disturbed his brain, he ordered – and woe betide any who disobeyed, that within the space of twenty-four hours, all who lived next to or across from his house must vacate their own abodes.

Clearly, Capasso chose Giraffi’s account (the fasting, the abuse of wine, the sleepless nights), but not his alone. Michele Baldacchini, in his Storia Napoletana, republished in Naples in 1863, had written of “the poison of adulation.” Capasso neither wished nor felt it in him to get to the bottom of this question. But, one cannot rule it out, he might have done so in a later writing that Di Giacomo, in his own Masaniello work soon discussed here, warmly called “very beautiful.”2 Notably, in the Famiglia di Masaniello, on the Sunday, the day of the trip to Posillipo and of the visit to the palace of the women of the d’Amalfi house, the scholar dwells on this last episode, neglecting Masaniello, who had left the palace in a felucca. It had been a happy Sunday, he writes, but the scene soon changed: On Tuesday morning, while Madama Antonia, Masaniello’s old mother, Berardina, and Grazia, uncertain but and anticipating their harm, alone and abandoned by all in a corner of their house were crying and sharing with one another their fears, a continual, distant low sound arrived at their ear. Were those shouts of triumph or of death? Had Masaniello, as he had last Wednesday, triumphed over his enemies, or was it all over for them: power, ease, and honours. The uncertainty was swiftly swept away, the noise was soon clearer, more distinct; it was a crowd of the people that was shouting, “Viva God and the king of Spain, Masaniello is dead, Masaniello is dead!” Under pain of rebellion, let no one mention Masaniello ever more! At those words, poor Berardina gave a loud scream and fell unconscious to the ground.3

But who had ordered Masaniello killed? To this question, Capasso has no answer perhaps because he takes for granted that the reader knows, or thinks so, or perhaps because he is keen to return to his subject there, the family. So he focuses on Berardina: he notes that she was tricked and then hauled to the palace by Carlo Catania. From these pages of his would spring 2 Salvatore Di Giacomo, “Nascita, matrimonio e morte di Masaniello,” in Celebrità napoletane (Trani: V. Vecchi, 1896). 3 Capasso, “La famiglia di Masaniello,” in Capasso, Masaniello, p. 106.

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a series of writings, to be treated below, about the unhappy widow, from Russo’s A mugliera e Masaniello [The wife of Masaniello], 4 to the works of Costagliola, which we shall soon discuss. Another matter that seems to have intrigued Capasso’s readers and admirers was the reaction of the people at the market after Masaniello’s death. His essay soon turns to them: “At this moment, that mob of popolani (lower class folk) had arrived in the Piazza del Mercato, and, firing some gunshots in the air, it repeated the same shouting and applause,” victors’ racket. For readers and authors who admire Capasso, “mob” and “plebs” merge; they scorn the plebs of Naples. Tragically, the Risorgimento now having ended, the division between civil population and plebs has returned. Salvatore Di Giacomo writes of the plebs in Nascita, matrimonio e morte di Masaniello (in Celebrità napoletane, 1895). The account was a homage to his teacher, Capasso. That becomes clear not only in his choice of topic, but also in his image of the house where Masaniello was born. Reading it, one pictures a place far richer and far calmer than what the seventeenth-century sources evoke. Under the silken coverlet, with the pure white sheet tucked out over, lay the new mother, fresh from childbirth, bled white, but with her eyes happy and a smile on her face. Her name was Antonia Gargano; she was, as they said back then, a plump, excellent woman. Around the bed other handsome commoners from the Mercato bustled about at their tasks, smiled on her, kissed her on the cheek; they were picturesquely dressed, with a bodice of smeriglia, with a shirt of Breton cloth peeking out from under, with skirts of frappata wool, in front of which spilled the embroidered apron with a gay fringe of lace or trugli, little dangling beads of glass.

These women were also shod: “the young women wore little shoes of pricked leather or cordwain.”5 Hoping to fill a gap in Capasso’s description, which arrived swiftly at Masaniello’s final breath, di Giacomo transcribes from a manuscript of the time some pages touching the moments after the death, and the funeral: “the body, dragged down the stairs, by the waist, in disorder, and thrown into the ditches between the Porta del Carmine and the Porta Nolana not far from the Catania bake-ovens. The severed 4 Capasso goes on to write of Berardina’s ending up as a prostitute hired out to Spaniards, as we have said, indeed a likely outcome. Capasso, Masaniello, p. xlvii. 5 Ibid., p. 81.

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head was put in a cage, which was hung from the walls at the Fosse del Grano.” He concludes: A sad story that in a peculiar fashion shows that the Neapolitan people, or, to put it better, the plebs, has never had a conscience of its own. Accustomed to serving others, it is stained by servitude, down to its very blood. It has always had the grim destiny of the ignorant, and its posthumous tears have never washed out some acts of cruelty and crimes which, nevertheless, make it worthier of pity than of hate.6

Such an accusation is missing from Capasso’s pages and I believe he never would have made it: his instructions for his own funeral come to mind: “No carriages, no honours, no flowers; all I want is the ragged poor of San Gennaro.” Not only his culture, but also his spirit prevented Capasso from making declarations so harsh against society’s weaker part. The most interesting passage in Capasso’s writings, it seems to me, is this very pronouncement, for it aligns completely with one of the new questions most debated in Naples, now that the dykes set up by the Risorgimento had broken.7 These are the years of the great novels about Naples, which grew from bold, passionate immersion into the city’s “belly.” A different matter was a new account in English, by Marie Hay, who claimed to have seen many records: beyond those of Giraff i, Donzelli, Modène, Midon, Roscoe, she consulted Capasso’s many pages, and numerous manuscripts of the library of the Società Napoletana di Storia Patria. Her version of the facts accords largely with that of Roscoe. It was yet one more denunciation, after Lady Morgan’s and that of Dumas, to mention the best known, that argued that Masaniello had been the victim of the cardinal and the viceroy; she, too, believes that he was poisoned. Moreover, to focus on the point more interesting for us, in Marie Hay’s novel one reads that the people suffered a great deal for its loss of Masaniello. Her description of the civic atmosphere after he was killed reads like a gothic novel: “and the darkness fell in solemn stillness, for no man laughed or feasted in Naples that night; only the great bell of the Carmine rang out calling the monks to prayer in the shadowy church where sleeps the people’s Hero, Saint, and Victim, Mas’Aniello.”8 6 Ibid., p. 91. 7 Aurelio Musi, “Fonti e forme dell’antispagnolismo nella cultura italiana tra Ottocento e Novecento,” in Alle origini di una nazione, pp. 11-45. 8 Mary Hay, Mas’Aniello. A Neapolitan Tragedy (London: Constable and Co., 1913).

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In Naples, on the other hand, to speak of Masaniello was like feeding an identikit in the making, targeting the city and the plebs (as if the plebs had never changed since then). One author who pronounced on the matter was Aniello Costagliola, discussed above. A play of his, Masaniello. Un atto (1913)9 brings him up. He later published two essays in which he dwelt on the plebs and its mask: Apoteosi e morte di Pulcinella (1914) and Napoli che se ne va (1918). In the first essay, Costagliola wrote that the city, and the plebs in particular, was perfectly represented by the commedia’s Pulcinella. In the history of Naples, he held, “becoming” was always blocked by “plebeian bestiality.” He gave two examples: the revolt of 1647 and the revolution of 1799, which, like other writers, he conjoined; in Naples, the people bore, for centuries already, the yoke, from one tyrant to the next; there were centuries of abjection, of abasement, of vileness, misery of the spirit and happiness of the belly; the insurrection of Masaniello and the epic of 1799 had not expressed any collective wish whatsoever for redemption, and had instead offered proof of how plebeian bestiality had always been fatal to human evolution. The assassination of the heroic fishmonger and the episodes of the Santa Fede movement [that suppressed the 1799 republic] are horrendous pages of history.10

This judgement began with some imprecise assumptions: as we now know, the plebs had not killed Masaniello; moreover, the plebs of 1647 was not the plebs of 1799. Nevertheless, this assessment is repeated and enriched with other examples in the collection, Napoli che se ne va.11 Yet, once more, Costagliola bears down hard on Naples with an eye to the 1647 revolt. Now, we might say, we face a situation antithetical to the Risorgimento. If, in the seventeenth century, Masaniello served to give enthusiasm, urge to combat, animate a reader, now Masaniello has instead been sucked into a discourse that depicts Naples and its hinterland as a “Land of Immobility,” where the plebs is immobile in its very mobility, as if time spun in a vacuum. So, he writes (note the sudden first person plural, Costagliola is turning to his fellow Neapolitans): Between the Punto della Campanella and Cape Miseno [the southern and northern edges of the Bay of Naples] lies the Land of Immobility. After the 9 Alberto Costagliola, Apoteosi e morte di Pulcinella (Naples: S. Morano, 1914), intr. by Bracco, p. 6. 10 Costagliola, Apoteosi e morte di Pulcinella, p. 6. 11 Alberto Costagliola, Napoli che se ne va (Naples: Giannini, 1918).

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Chinese and the Turks, we are the people most reluctant to reach out, to propagate itself and its things, to stick at least its nose outside domestic wall. Perhaps because our house is one of the most enchanting, flowerbedecked houses under the sun, and it does not stir in its inhabitants desire for other landscapes, marine or terrestrial; perhaps because we are face-to-face neighbours of Turkey, and in our blood we have a bit of the germ of Muslim sloth; perhaps, also, because the centuries-long political domination that made Naples into a fortress shut to exchanges and international communion, and turned the Neapolitans into so many good children to rear with a bit of flour and a little alphabet, suitable for homebound peoples. What is certain is that we are made that way: too much ingenuity, much laziness, and zero will.12

A little further on, Costagliola speaks of Pulcinella, and recalls the article by Giorgio Arcoleo, student of the philosopher and historian of literature Francesco De Sanctis, who, in an issue of Nuova Antologia, told how the scholar had given his students an essay assignment, to “describe Pulcinella for him.” De Sanctis discovered with surprise that each writer considered the Commedia character in a different way, and then came upon a very interesting essay, Arcoleo’s own, which he published in its entirely. What was the penetrating thing that the young student wrote? I transcribe here a passage from his essay: Pulcinella is impressed into the character of the lowest class of the Neapolitan people, still huddled in its narrow, lurid streets, that wind around this strange and magnificent edifice built of pieces Greek, Roman, Spanish and French. One can study its art, its luxuries, its industry, and that of its ancestors, in the excavations of Pompeii and in the National Museum; but its nature, its customs, its life can only be learned in another museum: the plebs of Naples, and in a type that contains its every trait, Pulcinella. The outwardness, the self-obliviousness, the accidental, the fugitive, the present: these things are the sphere, if not the entire world of this personage. In farce – frivolous chatter and paraphrase; in dialogue – double meanings; in actions – noisy racket; everywhere silliness, either spontaneous or false. His house is outside the domestic walls; it is on the street. His faith is outside of religion – in liturgy; his love is outside the soul – in the senses; his life is outside conscience – in form. His tendencies are always towards things material. His problems are 12 Ibid., pp. 9–10.

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gastronomical. He believes in illusion, in appearance, in the resuscitated dead, in magic, the lottery, and the devil. He believes in everything except himself.13

This essay was, Costagliola affirms, “a most precious document, ingenious and intuitive, wrongfully relegated to the forgetfulness files of the archives.” That “document” today, however, cannot but reveal a contemptuous attitude towards the plebs, one held by a large part of the city’s bourgeoisie. In the piece by Arcoleo there is not a nod to the causes of that backwardness or superstition. The plebs is portrayed as the “evil” on which another evil depended. There is silence about the responsibilities of those who had governed it, and of the other social classes. There is talk about the “lust for servitude” of the plebs, but also the admission that the judgement is truncated and maimed, in that, as for the lust for servitude, the very nobility of Naples dabbled in it, a fact that the revolt of Masaniello brings especially to mind.14 A bit further on, Costagliola himself pronounced on the plebs that Pulcinella represented to perfection. He wrote as follows: Ignorant and brilliant, Lucullan and contemplative, full of the devil and superstitious, sensual and sentimental, candid to the point to idyll, and brutal to the point of crime: a plebs ignorant of its government and unconscious of the yoke of foreign masters: a plebs that grew up near the altars of its too many churches and around the tables of its innumerable taverns: that plebs that in the course of barely nine days lifted upon its heart and crushed under its heels Masaniello d’Amalfi: that plebs that in 1799 sang in Piazza del Castello the patriotic hymn of Cimarosa, and lined up a few days later with the following of Cardinal Fabrizio Ruffo, and participated in the Saturnalias of the Santa Fede, and shouted Viva King Nasone [Big Nose] for every republican head falling from the execution block of Piazza Mercato: that very same plebs that on 15 May 1848 sang paeans to the constitution, brought its furniture to build the barricade and, the next day, did homage to the oath-spurning tyrant and gathered, scornful, around the corpse of Luigi La Vista [a young republican killed by a royalist firing squad]: that plebs, finally, that in 1860 cried all its tears 13 Ibid., p. 28. 14 I allude here to Domenico Rea, Pulcinella e ‘la canzone di Zeza,’ (Naples: ESI, 1968): “Wherever one desired to represent a class at any cost, the plebs should be added to the nobility, which, when it came to ‘the lust for servitude’ was not kidding at all.”

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for Francis II, voluntary exile, and spread roses and blessings on the path of Giuseppe Garibaldi, liberator.15

It is a view analogous to Arcoleo’s. Costagliola, more learned, can use a few more examples: beyond the revolt of 1647 and the revolution of 1799, he also summons up the scorn for La Vista and the flitting from pity for Francis II to love for Garibaldi.16 We could say much about this statement of Costagliola’s, but note only that, once again, he takes it as certain that not the viceroy but the plebs desired Masaniello’s death. This decrying of the plebs so profoundly shapes historical commentary that further writing seems to reinforce that very assessment, in a vicious circle. Take, for instance, Costagliola’s play about 1647. His Masaniello focuses not on the revolt’s first days, but on those that followed the popular party’s first encounters with the viceroy, in August. Here, the protagonist is “Bernardina.” In the first scene, the woman is running; she seeks refuge from not the Spaniards, but the plebeians themselves, keen to punish her because, in the rising, she went to the palace in a coach, while they were struggling to make a living. Like Arcoleo, Costagliola here scorned the plebs. A little further in the play, Carlo Catania intervenes on behalf of Masaniello’s widow. He asks forgiveness for what he did to her husband, invites her trust, and promises to help her to return to the palace, “as if you were the Queen of Spain in person!” But she does not give in. Still grieving deeply for her husband’s death, she wants revenge. And the opportunity soon presents itself. Other popolani, Masaniello’s partisans, join her. “Burn him alive. Drag him alive, then drag him dead to the seashore!” shouts Bernardina. And they take fire: “To the death Oh baker of Carmeniello! […] To the death the executioner of Masaniello!” The play ends with the “baker’s” death. The viceroy’s manoeuvres, once prominent for the Risorgimento, fade from view. The triumph of that view of the revolt, eyeing the plebs and its nature, also figures in historical essays of the time, in Croce’s Storia del Regno di Napoli (1924) and Michelangelo Schipa’s essays on Masaniello (1913–1925). There the revolt is no longer read as a precedent, but evaluated with an eye to its failure. As we have seen, Croce, in his Storia del Regno di Napoli, judged the 1647 revolt somewhat hastily: “the revolution of Masaniello finished, in the end, 15 Ibid., p. 30. 16 Scorn for the plebs is even clearer in another essay by Costagliola, to which I turn below: Apoteosi e morte di Pulcinella (Naples: S. Morano, 1914). There it becomes clear that one reason for his condemnation is his retrojection of negative comments onto the plebs after its reactionary role in 1799. In this line of writing the plebs figures as the culprit in Masaniello’s assassination: ibid., p. 6.

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like proletarian revolts always, devoid of solid, practical political concepts, and therefore incapable of deeply felt resistance and perseverance.”17 Schipa questioned the very worth of the definition “Masaniello’s revolution,” as, more than a proper revolution, it was a “conspiracy,” plotted not by the young Masaniello, but by dottore Genoino.18 Moreover, writing of Saturday, when, for the official historians, Masaniello’s decline began, Schipa scorns both Capopopolo and plebs: The hot vapours of power, rekindling the anarchic native pride, the insolence of his class and of his nature, broke the shell imposed on him by obedience […]. Once he had disabled that brake, he could not naturally find another in himself, that might contain the filthy, brutal and ferocious instincts born from the humble dwellings where he had always lived […] And returning to the violent brutality of his nature […].19

Educated readers of the day would not have been surprised by those remarks. To the contrary, as Giuseppe Galasso has said, in Naples they were warmly received.20 Nevertheless, one very critical review, in the Giornale d’Italia, from October 1934, did remark on the harshness of Schipa’s assessment of Masaniello. To adjudge Masaniello vulgar, insolent, devoid of any political idea whatsoever, is no hard thing to do, given that the analysis of the facts is hostile to him, be it only in the indefinite, broad sense, on account of the lack of precise elements that might argue the other way. But there are always some facts that demonstrate the insufficiency of those facts that belittle him […]. The more miserly bourgeois mentality of the various 17 Note that, in Storia del Regno di Napoli, Croce returned to his earlier thoughts on the backwardness and refractory nature of the “plebs,” when he reflected on the policies of the Bourbon kings: “The restored monarch said over and over, among the councils of the faithful, that the common people had been the only ones to keep their trust and that they alone should be trusted. Hence he rewarded and promoted the band leaders of 1799, even the least reputable among them, maintaining conspirational relations and doing everything in his power to keep alive their devotion.” History of the Kingdom of Naples, edited by H. Stuart Hughes, translated by Frances Franaye (Chicago, IL, and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1965), p. 236. 18 Schipa’s demotion of the revolt is clear from the titles of his Masaniello essays, “La mente di Masaniello,” and “La così detta rivoluzione di Masaniello,” republished in Schipa, Studi masanielliani. 19 Ibid., p. 413. 20 Giuseppe Galasso, “Gli studi masanielliani di Michelangelo Schipa,” in Schipa, Studi masanielliani, pp. VII–XXII.

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library-ridden scholars, far from any deeper reality and greatness, is honoured to add to the voluntary and involuntary guilt of Masaniello that “he had from the time of his birth the blot of infamy for being born only four months after the wedding of his parents.” [Schipa’s words]. To look at a man with such a presupposition is all one programme of incomprehension, by a pontificating bourgeoisie, of misery of the critical spirit, of human mediocrity.21

The “argument for the prosecution” goes on, returning to the madness: what if it was provoked by “stimulants to the nervous system”? Schipa had discarded the hypotheses, perhaps because he thought it part of a Risorgimento view of the revolt, but clearly for others it was not unlikely. Schipa’s willingness to break from Risorgimento thinking also surfaces in his “Ideali di independenza e partiti politici napoletani nel Seicento” (published in Atti della Real Accademia di Archeologia, Lettere e Belle Arti di Napoli, vol. 6, 1918, and again in his Albori di Risorgimento nel Mezzogiorno d’Italia), where he argues that the Risorgimento had no precedents: neither Masaniello nor the royal republic, nor the 1701 anti-Bourbon plot of the prince of Macchia were, said he, real attempts at independence.22 Schipa’s writings had a wide influence. A few years later, Gino Doria, in his Il napoletano che cammina e altri scritti sul colore locale [The Neapolitan who walks and other writings concerning local colour] wrote that the problems of Naples had begun when the “bacillus” of the French Revolution entered the civic body and the people lost the tranquility, which was constant, excepting the “unhinged Masaniello rising” and “other little revolutions without importance. Neither at ‘20 [an aborted constitutionalist interlude] nor at ‘48, nor at ‘60 were there to be seen, alongside lawyers and students, true and actual members of the people.”23 In earlier times, no such pronouncement would ever have been made. In those same years, in folklore, in the popular patrimony of Naples, Masaniello waned. So populist politicians tried to restore his vitality as a part of Naples, a dish no longer dubious.24 21 Icilio Petrone, “L’epica di Masaniello,” Il Giornale d’Italia, 3 October 1934. 22 Michelangelo Schipa, Albori di Risorgimento nel Mezzogiorno d’Italia, foreword by Gioacchino Volpe (Naples: Miccoli, 1938), pp. 1–26. 23 Gino Doria, Il napoletano che cammina e altri scritti sul colore locale aggiuntavi la canzone del Guarracino (Milan and Naples: Riccardo Ricciardi, 1957), p. 18. On the local colour, he writes: “the macaroni eaten by hand, the false street urchin, the false thug, all the thousand falsehoods of Neapolitan life.” (p. 53). 24 See Toma, Giornali e giornalisti, p. 226.

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2.

The Refusal of Tragedy

All that displeased Vittorio Viviani, the son of Raffaele, the playwright. His father had represented “Deep Naples,” the plebs, the swarming life of the alleys, with the eternal problem of misery. Through Raffaele, one heard of “seventeenth-century Naples,” of a Naples that emerged with its dialect, that harboured points of view, sayings, and jokes, all part of its ancient repertoire. Vittorio had heard talk of Masaniello from early childhood. “The story of Masaniello,” he wrote in his Storia del teatro napoletano, “was not slow to be linked to the theatrical traditions of my family. In 1894, my father had the idea of directing a theatre, and he named it after the famous Fishmonger.”25 But the father wrote nothing, so far as we can tell, about Masaniello. The son took the matter up, aware that it was intrinsically difficult. It would be easy to slip into demagogy, or sentimental hagiography, or a version that tickled the plebs’s fancy, as staged by many local theatres, and, probably, what anyone expected from a dramaturge who took on Masaniello. But Viviani wanted to provoke. Notably, he chose to write his play in national Italian, and to render in a fashion both vivid and engrossing the plebeians’ desperation. His Mas’Aniello rejected the comic tone usually associated with that social class. That is clear from the very first scene: a young woman; a gabella official pursues her and snatches from her a flour-filled stocking she is carrying. Carlo Catania intervenes: “And for a handful of flour/ you are making this tragedy?”26 The official, not heeding him, keeps dragging the woman, who continues to shout, “What thieves you are/ Seven carlini of gabelle / a tomolo’s worth of grain!” It is the hungry, desperate plebs making its voice heard. Then the sbirri fire their guns, hitting a child, who dies on the spot. The woman who had been fleeing (not Berardina) screams, leans over the little body, already dead: “Speak to me, say a word to me/ Don’t sleep any longer.” The scene soon ends, with the child’s funeral, a scene lifted from a Russian film, wrote Federico Petriccione, who commented on a 1953 production of the play at Milan’s Teatro della Scala. As all know, the librettist Viviani adheres to the partisans of the extreme Left, and, if in this Mas’Aniello he is not carried away by demagogy, still, at 25 Vittorio Viviani’s story about his father appears in his Storia del teatro napoletano (Naples: Guida, 1969), p. 807. 26 Vittorio Viviani, Mas’Aniello. Tragedia popolare in tre atti musica di Jacopo Napoli (Milan and Naples: Ettore Novi, no date), p. 13.

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once, from the first scene, which recounts the episode of the child killed by the gunshots of a gabella official and carried in procession through the city, with a scenic movement that brings to mind the corpse of the child Mustafà, symbol of the “Road Towards Life” [(1931)], as the Soviet director Ekk conceived and rendered it in a famous film, the intentions to political polemic are clear.

Masaniello here shares much with his Risorgimento models: determined, honest, blameless. Clearly, Viviani had in mind one play we have mentioned, that of Pasquale De Virgilii, for he inserted a song that De Virgilii attributed to Salvator Rosa, a figure absent from the new Masaniello dramaturgy: “The hail is coming/ the bread will fall [in weight] / the ragged people / will eat at the food-hoards!” Viviani’s script, nevertheless, lacks that clarity of the Risorgimento’s plays about Masaniello’s end. The metamorphosis has no single cause; as we have seen, the version of the historians (Viviani knew the historical essays of Croce and Schipa) does not give poison a decisive role. Although he deals with this hypothesis, he does not refute the others – physical exhaustion, pride. So, in his play, Masaniello is hit by fatigue before he is poisoned and perhaps – the reader begins to wonder – is also bedazzled by his power, as Catania claims. In any event, the voices raised against him seem overblown. Masaniello defends himself:27 “But don’t you understand that my enemies are the same as yours?” But it all was already decided. Like Christ, he was fated to a tragic death. The plebs, notably, does not here drag his corpse. Rather, it weeps, using the words of the composition we have cited: “Dead is he who has humiliated the nobles!” Masaniello had to seem like Christ: Gloria al Padre… Mas’Anie’! Al Figliuolo… Mas’Anie’! Allo Spirito Santo… 27 Viviani declared, “The term ‘Neapolitan’ should be read as provincial, anti-unity, and pro-Bourbon. Naples was in fact, as is well known, a foreign colony.” For him, the city was “a letter of credit [cambiale] that was never paid, to tell the truth, but was always renewed, and is so still, the debtors express themselves in the national language; the others, who still use the vernacular dialect (which has now exhausted its function as essential to creativity), seem accustomed to be willing to let themselves still be robbed, and what is worse, they are the strongest allies of the false Italians sold to the foreigner,” in Antonio Ghirelli, La Napoletanità. Un saggio-inchiesta di A. G. (Naples: Società Editrice Napoletana, 1976), pp. 46–47.

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Mas’Anie’! E cosí sia. Glory to the Father… Mas’Anie! To the Son… Mas’Anie! To the Holy Ghost Mas’Anie! And so be it.

At these words, the heavy red curtain of the Teatro della Scala descended. The play did not please. It proceeded by fragments, says a review of March 1953, in Oggi. Or perhaps the Neapolitan claque who had come to applaud the maestro, Jacopo Napoli, who set the text to music, had grated on a Milanese public that used applause with discretion. Or perhaps audiences were startled by the lack of the local colour that people outside Naples now saw as the city’s mark. The reviewer seems to agree with the public: “the authors, and in particular the composer, could not forget how that man and that people were Neapolitans. They could not fail to try to place their people’s tragedy in ‘Parthenopean dimensions’.” But it was just what Viviani wished to do: to remove Masaniello from the local colour that condemned the Neapolitans to an identity that he did not like. For Viviani, “the Neapolitan” was never fixed and “determined.” Local colour seemed to imply that his city could have no future different from its past, as he declared in an interview on the subject of napoletanità.28 For the reviewer, Masaniello should instead return to being Neapolitan.

3. Masaniello-Pulcinella Eduardo De Filippo attempted, in a sense, to “re-Neapolitanize” Masaniello and his history. His musical comedy Tommaso d’Amalfi (1962) was partly in dialect. Sometimes, protagonists switch to Italian. De Filippo put on stage many men and women of the plebs, and showed their character, good-natured but not stupid. It fell to them to speak of Masaniello and to recount the revolt’s beginning [all in Neapolitan]: 28 Eduardo De Filippo, Tommaso d’Amalfi, in De Filippo, Cantata dei giorni dispari (Turin: Einaudi, 1966), vol. III, p. 344.

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One fishmonger: Masaniello is a good lad. Another fishmonger: All house and church. A third fishmonger: He loves kids and respects old age.

But something unsettling has happened. Berardina speaks: “I no longer understand him. He is always nervous, lost in thought. […] When I speak he doesn’t hear me, he doesn’t answer […]. And he does not want to go to work. He says that work is useless.” The play runs slowly, for De Filippo desires to present, with the dialect, the plebeian part of Naples, endowed with good sense, and given to surprising wisecracks and linguistic play. Scene after scene, it lays out the plot by which Masaniello was first tricked, then poisoned, and finally killed. Meanwhile – the device, a strong trait of the play, is manifestly Pirandellian – a chorus of voices calling him “mad” waxes ever louder. The first to speak of madness is the Duke of Arcos, when he learns that Masaniello wants nothing for himself, only the good of the people. If Masaniello, from his point of view, was crazy, the duke, meanwhile, is foxy. To hedge the people’s ire, he feigns the wish to satisfy all its requests. Knowing that the privileges of Charles V cannot be found, he orders new ones made. There follow entertaining scenes, where De Filippo unmasks the trick’s sly workings, but, at the same time, seeks the public’s complicit smile. Quick, quick, call to court a painter with paints and brush Two, three strokes well done nicely, prettily a Privilege will be slapped together.29 Si chiami presto a corte un dipintore, con colori e pennello. Due, tre colpi ben dati, di bel bello, un Privilegio s’impapocchierà

Then Masaniello is invited to the palace. Berardina is afraid: “they will kill my man.” Clearly, she is referring to the viceroy, but when her brother-in-law asks her who might kill him, after a moment of bafflement she then answers: “You. You too (pointing out Pione). And you too (she points to Genoino, then 29 Federico Frascani, Tommaso D’Amalfi, in Frascani, Eduardo (Naples: Guida, 2000), pp. 113–116.

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to Abbot Filomarini, and finally to the cardinal). And you all too […].” Here is De Filippo’s message: everybody had abandoned Masaniello. This is very clear from remarks shortly after, among some commoners. Two women say [in Neapolitan]: Rachele: Masaniello on horseback… what a crazy business. Carmela: But why? Wasn’t he worthy to go on horseback? Rachel! Hush! You are a kid and you don’t understand a thing! A miserable fisherman who goes on horseback, who dresses in silver, and presents himself at the palace […].

Others object to being driven from their homes: Gennaro: Masaniello has given the order to evict all the inhabitants who live in the houses next to and above him. Two hours to get out. Genuino (to Carrese): Have you seen. This is the story I was telling you. Carrese: That is a question that makes one fear that there has been some sort of betrayal. Genuino: But why does he not give up power? Why does he not get out of this? […] Genuino: It is pure madness.

Are these rumours based on fact? It is impossible to answer clearly. Judgement of Masaniello seems suspended. That he was victim of a poison, in this play, remains in doubt. Certainly, De Filippo shows clearly that the plebeians abandoned him too swiftly, misjudging the risks they ran. The chorus of voices alleging his madness grows louder. “Masaniello is mad,” they shout at him. A little further on, gunshots by the familiar “killers” put an end to his life and he shouts, “Ah, traitor! Ingrate!” Is this play about the Neapolitans? Certainly, in the dialogues emerges an identity perhaps definable and recognizable as Neapolitan. But, as has been said, the play expresses De Filippo’s wider misanthropy. That is especially evident in the finale, in the verses with which Masaniello asks the “people” to leave him in peace, having experienced how he who loved them ended up dead, and that nothing would ever change: Let me last another one hundred years And another hundred again…and another thousand! How many more you put on top of that

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that is how much peace you give me. People! People of broken shoes and eating bread, crowd with eyes red, afflicted, these miseries of yours, to whom are they reckoned? I am dead, killed, and who has killed me? People! […]

One can say something analogous about another text dedicated to Masaniello, not a play but a “ballad” by Luigi Compagnone: Ballata e morte di un capitano del Popolo (Turin, 1974). The introduction to the text leaves no room for doubt as to its true subject and hidden point of view. It concerns, indeed, a passage from a well-known poem of Tommaso Campanella concerning the “people”: The people is a beast, variable and gross, that is unaware of its strength; and it therefore puts up with burdens and blows with staffs and stones, guided by a lad who lacks power, whom it could undo with a good shaking: but it fears him and serves him in all his pleasures Nor does it know how much he is feared, that the pompous guns30 cast a spell, to make his senses render him dull. Stupendous thing! And there is hanging and jailing with his own hand and there is death and war for one carlino of the many he gives the king. All is his, between heaven and earth, but he does not know it; and, if some person alerts him, he kills him and lays him low.

But then, scrolling through the ballad, one sees that it does not sing of Masaniello, as one would expect, but Pulcinella Cetrulo (Costagliola had spelled it out: He was a son of Acerra or of Giffoni, and his name was Pulcinella, legitimate son of Tolla Pantola and of Ciancocozza Cetrulo). Pulcinella is here a dis-occupied soul, a hungry organism, he goes wandering through the alleys, squares, low quarters and storerooms and the residential quarters 30 Pompous guns: “bombassi,” a double sense, meaning both bombards and the pompous bombast of the tyrant: Dini, Masaniello, p. 14.

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where, they say, he sows airy happiness. He has no work, but he invents and improvises pathetic illusions of it: he is, one time and another, thief, servant, pimp, buffoon. Being the cynic and scamp he is, he flickers like a lantern in the dark alley of the sun-struck city, and such a lantern neither wind nor hail puts out. His people, or plebs, loves and acclaims him; it obeys his every nod. Delirious, malnourished, he feeds himself on shifty tricks and doubtful prayers, on lean thieving and on rags.

Pulcinella lives in the Piazza del Mercato. There, he beholds an unaccustomed spectacle. Lo, all the kings Naples has ever had arrive. They advanced towards the city, on foot and on horseback, in an armoured car and an aircraft, and they stir up dust everywhere, the dust of History, so that a reeking haze settles on the city, lifted now and again by an Africus-south-wind, blowing in with fiery flames.

From the thought of being able to serve those princes, he passes to true and proper adulation: “And hail to you, Angevins; and to you, Charles I. Oh, the Aragonese! Viva Alfonso the Magnanimous; Viva Charles II; may you enjoy this reverence of mine, French kings! Your most humble servant, Bourbons, iniquitous brood!” And further, “I prostrate myself, Charles III! I fall to my knees, Cardinal Ruffo! And I wash your feet, Ferdinand and little Francis!” Then, catching sight of the Piedmontese, he applauds again: “Mother of God, the Piedmontese! Fine capes! Um, King Vittorio, with the Savoyard sabre, with the moustache, come to make Italy united, Viva Viva!”31 An immense crowd comes running: it asks for food and waits. Pulcinella enters the palace, where those who have ever ruled the city have all gone in. When he arrives, this is how he introduces himself: “I am the one whom your Majesty has so finely figured me out to be: a melancholy buffoon and resigned philosopher, a well-schooled ignoramus, a poor-Christ who carries his cross with unconquered resignation […]. And I am the Swede, dying of laughter. In this plebs there is a taste for contraries.” Pulcinella throws wide his arms, he approves. This is what he is like, at once servile and rebel, and more things too: “a cretin and a genius, courageous coward, a piazza buffoon and emeritus chameleon.” Among the audience is a president of the USA, who chortles, “OK, What a laugh!” How does this ballad call Masaniello to mind, even though not a single line by Compagnone speaks of the Capopopolo? It is because of Pulcinella’s 31 Luigi Compagnone, Ballata e morte di un capitano del Popolo (Turin: Rusconi, 1974), p. 4.

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actions. At a certain point, while the crowd is pushing towards the palace, he backs off, saying: “I will show you, Majesties, how my people is obedient to me.” Then he presses his lips with his index finger: the gesture of Masaniello from the palace. At that point, everyone falls silent, leaving the kings amazed. “Oh, what terrible power this buffoon has!”

The next scene also brings Masaniello to mind. Pulcinella ascends a stage and speaks to his people: My friends, I don’t yet know what will happen between me and the kings who have come to take possession of this city. Yesterday they gave me a pouch of fine gold. Because they feared me. Because, through me, they had fear of you. But, tomorrow, what will they give us? Dishonours and gabelle, as always. My people, let me say two words for my own satisfaction. You remember, my people, to what state they have always reduced you, using those many oppressions with which throned and honoured lords always oppressed you. You remember how you have never been able to fill yourselves to satiety with the fruits of this earth and the fish of this sea, you must always pay the tax collectors who suck your blood. Now the kings have come all together to suck you dry, all at once. All this night I have been unable to sleep. Last night I dreamed Jesus Christ and the Most Holy Virgin of the Carmine, who told me, “It’s too long you have been a buffoon on the piazza, a procurer, pimp and acrobat.”

In sum, the time had come to stop mulling day in day out about his very own life. The kings wanted to corrupt him, to cheat his people, but he had no inclination to consent. So, it sends a deputation to the kings, to inform them that they were unwelcome and should get up and leave. The kings refuse and so a revolt explodes. The prisons spring their prisoners. Pulcinella’s swarming army conquers. Sure of himself, he enters the palace and tells the kings once more it is time to go, but they stall him. So, he takes their place. He sits, with his “legs draped.” In this scene, Compagnone is citing, almost word for word, a passage from Capasso’s essay on the house of the Capopopolo. Sitting on the stage used for the Force-of-Hercules human pyramids, with his legs draped over the side, barefoot, he is now the referee of life and death. With a wand between his hands, he gives orders, sends provisions,

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solves the many petitions that, lodged on the sharp ends of cane stems, they toss up to him from the street. And he deliberates not only on the feeding of the city, on the weapons, on the militias, on civil and criminal justice, and on abuses of the building code. Oh, he intends as well to reform social customs, and to regulate the priesthood with strict discipline […].

After having ordered so many executions, nevertheless, he is assailed by doubt: he says to himself, on the quiet, that in becoming Capopopolo he has suffered a loss in blessedness. Why was he there? Why had he taken on a role that chafed? Soon after, the cardinal invites him to an encounter and addresses him: “Philanthia, or, if you like, amour propre. And what is it if not mad amour propre – self-love, that has impelled – shall we say it – ‘your’ people to move against the Kings? Oh, Pulcinella Cetrulo, the Kings! But do you know that, ever since the dense night of shadows where our first farthest antiquity is shrouded, there appears this eternal light, that never sets and that one cannot for any reason at all put into doubt?” Pulcinella falls frightened: “Mother of God, how he speaks. Pulcinella is already drenched in sweat under his two masks, strives manfully to understand, and feels utterly humiliated; still, he has grasped something, but already he has something of a headache.” He manages merely to object that it was Jesus who told him to get the people to rise. The cardinal pushes back: that is not how it went, rather it was the “evil one” who induced him to become Capopopolo; to the point that Pulcinella admits his error. Soon after, nothing trammels the people from hauling him to the gallows and making him die in his own blood. The revolt is now legible as a “Pulcinella show,” one of the episodes of rebellion that then slipped back perfectly into line with those others that, said the author, made up the identity and destiny of the Neapolitan people.32 The text is startling. There was a reaction to Pulcinella: that masked commedia figure, it had been said, presented an image of Naples that must be fought. Pulcinella had comforted the kings who governed the city (indeed, in the final years of Bourbon rule he did often turn up on stage).33 Gino 32 Ghirelli, La Napoletanità, p. 62, remarks, concerning Costagliola, “The author lays very harsh accusations against the ‘ruling classes,’ who acted in such a fashion that there was only one destiny: they have exploited at our expense a city that every day goes a century backwards, where the criminal bad conduct of the builders has criminally taken away what little remained of what was true and really ours, while the sacrosanct aspiration for a little common good is transformed into the old condemnation of the many who who were working for the few.” 33 For Pulcinella on stage in late Bourbon years, see Carlo Augusto Mayer, Vita popolare a Napoli nell’età romantica, edited by Lidia Croce (Bari: Laterza, 1968), pp. 306 ff.

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Doria writes of a recent ban on the character (we do not know exactly when), which was however honoured in the breach, for they let a cigarseller Pulcinella circulate on the terraces of the royal palace.34 In Il Figlio di Pulcinella (1957), De Filippo had Pulcinella remove both his mask and the philosophy of resignation and sly survival connected with it, and grant it to his son John (“I don’t want to screw the boss, I don’t want to scrape by in imbroglios and tricks, I want to look outwards, and I want to be looked in the eyes, and I want to say ‘this is yours and this is mine […].’ The world is waiting for me, papa […] it is waiting for me with its face clean and sincere.”)35 This was an important refusal, dictated by the city’s flaws that Pulcinella stood for. Besides, as we have seen, the twentieth century was hesitant to invest in Masaniello’s chracter. His story, as told by the most authoritative historians, portrayed a decline, a metamorphosis that made him proud and aggressive even with his closest circle. It weighed heavily, as it long had, on his reputation. Masaniello had been associated with Pulcinella in some puppet shows in Northern Europe and in the Cunto di Masaniello.36 And then the revolution of 1799 had brought Pulcinella back to mind. In his essay on the masked Commedia character, Croce referred to a picture in a book published in 1799 in Germany, Neapel und die Lazzaroni…, which portrayed “the armament of the lazzaroni.” Among the others, there appeared a pulcinella with a chequered costume reminiscent of a Harlequin, with a conical hat and a fat face.37 It may have been from there that Enzo Striano took the idea for a “scene” in Il resto di niente, where Eleonora Pimentel de Fonseca asks Pulcinella for some help in educating the people, but he answers that he could give no help, because nobody would have believed him. His mask was already compromised. “Donna Liono, give ear to what I think. Pulcinella is a poor critter. A man of naught, a tramp, a coward. One who thinks only to save his skin in the disasters that deluge him. That is 34 Doria, Il napoletano che cammina, p. 18. 35 Eduardo De Filippo, Il figlio di Pulcinella (1957), in De Filippo, Cantata dei giorni dispari, vol. III, p. 104. It is a drama where Eduardo sets Pulcinella in contrast with his “most secret conscience”: Lombardi Satriani and Domenico Scafoglio, “Il buffone infelice,” in Pulcinella. Una maschera tra gli specchi, edited by Franco Carmelo Greco (Naples: ESI, 1990), pp. 437–450. De Maio writes “in Pulcinella is the philosophical mind-set of the Neapolitan people”: Romeo De Maio, Pulcinella. Il filosofo che fu chiamato pazzo (Florence: Sansoni, 1989), p. 6. Aniello Montano, Pulcinella. Dal mimo classico alla maschera moderna (Naples: Libreria Dante & Descartes, 2003). 36 For the Northern assimilation of Masaniello and Pulcinella, see Wallace, Masaniello e il folklore della violenza politica, pp. 210–211. 37 Benedetto Croce, “Celebrità del Pulcinella. Pulcinella simbolo del proletariato Napoletano,” in Croce, Saggi sulla letteratura italiana del Seicento, pp. 251–260.

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why he is a quarrelsome, stinking, thieving minstrel. He is not a hero. Do you see him when he climbs up on a stool and hollers?” There was no room in Pulcinella’s “philosophy” for believing in a revolt. Let us turn to Striano’s great novel about the events of 1799, Il resto di niente: Pulcinella is not a happy character. He knows the hidden things. That the Republic will go belly-up, the way things all finish, that people think that they are doing this, doing that, to change the world, but none of it is true. Things change face, not substance: they always go the way they must. The way the boss desires. The world can’t spin backwards. Every morning up comes the sun, and then every night down it goes, life’s a day gone by: death will come and nobody can halt it.38

So, re-reading the history of Naples, Compagnone thought that Pulcinella represented the people better than did Masaniello. Can one therefore say that the myth that several times sparked revolt, in Naples and elsewhere, had wilted, absorbed by the masked character who represented the identity of the Neapolitan people? To judge by a play put on in 1974, the very year Compagnone’s ballad came out, it seems not. At least for some, at least in some verses, Masaniello remained Pulcinella’s antithesis. That year, after the cholera outbreak of 1973, Armando Pugliese and Elvio Porta put on a show about the Capopopolo, in hopes of injecting enthusiasm, medicine for the body of the city, finally cured but sorely tested.39 The Neapolitan plebs filled the scenes: the authors hoped to cajole the Neapolitan audience, showing them their way of speaking, their gestures, their characteristic capacity to strike with a sudden movement or unexpected, provocative wisecrack. The first scene could not be more Neapolitan; Berardina threatened to put into the oven the canes her husband had harvested, now under foot at home. Berardina. Be off with you!…You and these canes. Do you understand that I have no place to put them. Donnarumma. But they are canes for a procession for the Madonna Carmine… Berardina. And what is the Madonna going to do with all these canes?40 38 Enzo Striano, Il resto di niente, preface by Francesco Durante (Cava de’ Tirreni: Avagliano, 19972), pp. 354–356. 39 The script for this production survives: Elvio Porta and Armando Pugliese, “Masaniello,” pp. 56–77. 40 Ibid., p. 59.

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The husband, still, is determined: he is faithful to the King of Spain, but furious at the maladministration that brought in the gabelle. So, soon after, he decides to put himself up as Capopopolo. “My people. I am Tommaso Aniello. I am Masaniello, from Vico Rotto. I am one of you, and I am the one who set f ire to the gabella shed. Where is it written that the people has to listen only to rumours and blows? I am the people, and I set f ire to this shed because it was stealing the abundance of our labour.”41 He is of the plebs, he speaks their language, a language trimmer and less “indulgent” than De Filippo’s. Berardina tries to oppose his project. She tries to pitch, against his will, the habit of leaving it to others, of trying to make it through by minding one’s own business, but the husband tells her, “Now, in Naples, things – they will have to change.” “And will you be the one to change them?” Berardina throws back at him. Masaniello goes his own way, straight, asking for the abolition of the gabelle. The problem is not the foreigner but, precisely, the gabelle. It is a point of contact between the text and the time when it was written, as it might be for our time, too. But there are obstacles. The viceroy does all he can to stop the revolt. “There is no time, this is not a suitable time to remain tranquil, there are no walls, there are no gates, there are no windows that will suffice to give you decent tranquility.” He speaks in Italian, as does the Duke of Maddaloni, who, on his own initiative, offers to punish Masaniello (it is not always the foreigners who sow quarrels between the people and the nobles; this tension has a long history): “that utterly stinking yokel, lazzaro, do-nothing.” This Duke of Maddaloni has much in common with snooty nobles from the the actor Totò’s comic films. Of Masaniello, he says, “he wanted to show off, acting ‘o generale’ behind my back and on my skin.” Here, Maddaloni stresses the linguistic habits of the Capopopolo, even though he himself is Neapolitan, and a double traitor, to Masaniello and to the Naples that he stands for. Genoino instead speaks a language, mid-way between Italian and Neapolitan, which seems to signal his perch halfway between viceroy and people. His objectives seem vacuous, as seen when he opposes Marco Vitale. Vitale says: One moment! And with this, nothing is changed at all. We have fought, we have suffered, and what do we have for it? A piece of paper that tells us that we were faithful, and remain faithful, to the King of Spain. After which, we put down our arms and went back to our homes. Spanish 41 Ibid., p. 64.

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soldiers, be my guest! (he makes a bow). And when they have come in, the pieces of paper will be shredded, and whoever had the courage and rebelled will pay for all of us.

Genoino replies to Vitale that he has it all wrong: The Neapolitan people has never rebelled against the two supreme powers that command it: God and the king. It has opposed the nobles’ bad governance and the tax officials who sucked its blood. The king has been and the king now is, and all he must do is accept in kindly fashion the petitions that the people send his way, and nothing more. The promises of the king of Spain are sacred. 42

Here, face to face, we have two divergent opinions of the city, both authoritative. Vitale maintains that it should and could aim for independence; Genoino thinks that the most it could obtain are those privileges, because the Neapolitan people has never “rebelled.” Who is right here? It is not immediately clear, because, while the two are talking, the Duke of Maddaloni opens fire on Masaniello. There follow the episodes in the historical record. Then, Marco Vitale comes to the fore. He warns Masaniello before he heads for the palace: those who wrote the capitoli did not really have at heart the people’s interests (here there arises again the question of the difference between the educated folk and the plebs). “The space is for those who know how to read and write and can pay. And in those twenty-five clauses our poor folk don’t ever speak, not even once. Masaniè, if you go into the Royal Palace, you will never again come out!” But Masaniello knows that he cannot turn back. He has decided to be the head of the people, he accepts the duties and shoulders the risks. “I had to change my clothing to go to the palace: and I change my clothing. I have to adapt because I don’t understand who is making a fool of me? And I adapt. I am the people.” Still, he remains afraid. He talks too much. Berardina no longer recognizes him. The theme of Masaniello’s “madness” is here recast with an eye to the arts of Shakespeare and Pirandello: the madman, though wise, is held mad because of his external actions, but his words are lucid and prophetic. Masaniello catches Genoino’s detachment and forecasts his abandonment of the plebs. Filomarino and the viceroy cash in on his madness: “Oh, finally!” the viceroy exclaims. “So it is evident that only for reasons of security we must proceed to the replacement of the Generalissimo.” So, 42 Ibid., p. 71.

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mobilised, they hasten towards the assassination. Masaniello is in the church. He wants to speak, but the cardinal prevents him: Masaniello: Eminenza, I had so much to say… Filomarino: Not now. Not in this place. Now go in peace. We absolve you of all your sins in the name of God’s pardon.

After his death, the ungrateful people persecutes Berardina. “‘The queen of the sardines. The queen of the sardines.’ And, pfu! pfu! pfu!, they swear and spit, but they are not nobles and they are not knights, nor Spaniards either, they are friends, they are dead from hunger, like you and me.” The play presented a defeat, but revived the idea, perhaps wide-spread, of a Masaniello mad but wise. Moreover, the sly voice of Marco Vitale emerges. He seems to usurp the place once held by Salvator Rosa, affectionate friend, loyal, willing to hang on to the end, because the cause was just. Even more than Masaniello, it is he (who in the play survives, unlike in history) who offers an example, who suggests after the defeat, another possible line of conduct. Today, the myth of Masaniello seems quiescent. The myth, not the memory, which retains its double face, one telling that it ends, the other that can begin; the first shows weakness, the other strength.



Selected bibliography

Abbreviations ASG ASV BVat BASN BNM BNN BNF BC BOGN BTTN SNSP DBI

1.

= Genoa, Archivio di Stato = Vatican City, Archivio Segreto Vaticano = Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana = Naples, Biblioteca dell’Archivio di Stato = Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional de España = Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale “Vittorio Emanuele III” = Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale = Rome, Biblioteca Casanatense = Naples, Biblioteca Oratoriana dei Girolamini = Naples, Biblioteca della Facoltà Teologica ‘San Tommaso d’Aquino’ = Naples, Società Napoletana di Storia Patria = Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (Treccani)

Main Neapolitan manuscripts

Anonymous, Diario del successo nelle revoluzioni popolari di Napoli dalli 7 di Luglio 1647 in avanti, BNN, XV D 45, ff. 1r–164v. Anonymous, “Domenica 7 di luglio 1647,” ASN, Doria d’Angri, part I, vol. 30/19, f. 1r ff. Anonymous, Fatti di Masaniello nel 1647, SNSP, XXVIII D 19, ff. 1r–32v. Anonymous, Giornale Istorico de Tumulti populari e de di loro eventi accaduti, e delle pene de delinguenti da luglio 1647 per li 16 gennaio 1652, SNSP, XXVI B 14, ff. 105. Anonymous, Memorie istoriche degl’Avvenimenti più memorabili accaduti in Napoli nel tempo delle sollevazioni Popolari degl’anni 1647 e 48, BTTN, ms. AR 5 47. Anonymous, Passaggiero che bide sto Pataffio, BNN, Branc. III D 8. Anonymous, “Popolo mio, eccoti osservati li toi privilegi.” ASN, Doria d’Angri, part I, vol. 30/19, II. Anonymous, Relaçion del primero tumulto succedido en la ciudad de Napoles empeçado a ultimo de Junio 1647 y continuado per todo los 23 de julio siguiente, BNN, Branc. VI A 15, ff. 239r–250r. Anonymous, Relaçiones de los tumultos dela ciudad de Napoles desde el año de 1647 hasta el 1648, SNSP, XXVII A 8, ff. 185v. Anonymous, Relatione della sollevatione della città di Napoli per occasione della Gabella de frutti successo a di 7 di luglio nel presente anno 1647, BNN, B. Branc. II F 7, ff. 33r–87r.

340 MASANIELLO

Anonymous, Relatione. Dell’origine, progressi, e stato della sollevatione del Popolo nella Città di Naples, BNN, Branc. V F 15, ff. 40r–47r. Anonymous, Relatione della sollevatione del Popolo di Napoli nel 1647, SNSP, XXV D 11, ff. 1–44r. Anonymous, Relazione del tumulto avvenuto dopo la morte di Masaniello (from the “Archivio di Alcalà. Lettera del 18 luglio. Papeles de Estado leg. 1537, Papeles del Marques de la Fuente.” ff. 43–45), SNSP, XXVII A 6, ff. 291r–293v. Anonymous, Relazione del tumulto di Napoli del 1647 dal suo primo giorno sino all’interro di Masaniello, SNSP, XXVII B 3, ff. 24–31. Anonymous, 1647 Sollevazione del Popolo Napoletano diretta da Tomaso Aniello de Amalfi, SNSP, XXVII B 16, ff. 1–12. Anonymous, Storia di Masaniello, BNN, X D 101, ff. 75r. Bandi e Prammatiche diverse nel tempo di Masaniello, BOGN, S.M. 28. 3. 13. Calà, Carlo, Istoria della vera cagione e dei principali motivi della sollevazione Napoletana accaduta nel 1646 (sic): nel tempo di Tomaso Agnello di Amalfi, BNN, X E 59, ff. 1–121r. Campanile, Giuseppe, Libro Primo Quale contiene le cose degne di memoria accadute nella città di Napoli nel tempo delle sollevazioni popolari degl’anni 1647 e 1648, SNSP XXVI D 5, ff. 1–722. Campanile, Giuseppe, Diario di G. C. delle Revolutioni di Naples del 1647, BNN, X F 62, ff. 3r–87v. Campanile, Giuseppe, Diario di G. C., circa la sollevazione della Plebe di Napoli ne gl’anni 1647 e 1648, con un’additione d’Innocenzo Fuidoro, che si nota con questo segno xx. Vincenzo d’Onofrio, SNSP, XXVIII C 5, ff. 1r–82r. Capasso, Bartolommeo, Appunti autografi sulla rivolta, in SNSP, Fondo Capasso, ms. 9. Caputo, Nicola, Frammenti degli Annali della Città di Napoli dal 1611 al 1679, scritti da N. C. Gentiluomo Napoletano, SNSP, XXI D 15, 211. Carusi, Francesco, Narrazione del tumulto seguito nella città di Naples, nella quale si raccontano gli vari avenimenti di Masanello, e suoi seguaci, dalli 7 di luglio 1647 per insino alli 21 d’agosto del detto anno, SNSP ms. XXI C 20. Cose di Napoli, BASN, ms. 110, ff. 211 [letter: “La morte di Mas Anello dentro il claustro del Carmine,” ff. 123r. –124v]. Cronistoria del Real Convento del Carmine Maggiore di Napoli scritta dal Reverendo Padre Pier Tommaso Moscarella Carmelitano Napoletano Figlio del medesimo convento, BNN, X AA 2. De Fiore, Tommaso, Racconto de Tumulti popolari di Napoli con gli avvenimenti stravaganti commessi sotto Mas’Aniello d’Amalfi dalli 7 di Luglio 1647 sino ad Agosto 1648, SNSP, XXVIII B 16, 1–241.

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Della Moneca, Tizio, Istoria delle revoluzioni di Napoli dell’anno 1647, SNSP, XXVII C 11, ff. 1r–349r. Della Porta, Aniello, Causa di stravaganze overo compendio istorico delli rumori, e sollevazioni de’ Popoli, successi nella città e Regno di Napoli dal vii Gennaro 1647 sino a Giugno 1655, BNN, XV F 49–51, ff. 223r. de’ Medici, Vincenzo, Relazioni da Napoli sulla rivolta del 1647, estratte dall’Archivio di Stato in Firenze e dall’Archivio Estense, SNSP, XXVII A 13, ff. 123r–135r. Denti, Giovan Battista, Relazione del tumulto di Napoli principiato li 7 luglio 1647 essendone stato l’inventore Tomaso Aniello di Amalfi pescivendolo, BNN, ms. XVIII 130, ff. 1r–112v. Degl’Avvenimenti più memorabili accaduti in Napoli nel tempo delle Sollevazioni Popolari degl’Anni 1647, e 48. Con altra breve continuazione di tutto ciò accadde più memorabile da detto tempo per tutto l’Anno 1656 trascritti da G.B.G. libro III, BNN, XV G 28. Memorie di alcuni capitani e ministri nominati nella presente Istoria, ff. 208r–273v. Editti e Proclami della Repubblica Partenopea sotto Masaniello dall’8 luglio all’8 aprile 1648, BNN X B 92, ff. 1r–141r. Mayorica, Giacomo, I tumulti e revolutioni della città e regno di Napoli, in Relazioni da Napoli sulla revolt del 1647; note estratte dall’Archivio di Stato di Firenze. Carte strozziane, SNSP XXVII, ff. 32r–111r. Molini, Alessandro, Racconto preceduto da Nova osservatione sopra il prodigioso mostro apparso in Polonia interpretato sopra li successi di Tommaso Anello d’Amalfi, occorsi nella città di Napoli l’anno 1647, lungo 35 piedi. Largo 4 cubiti e mezzo: alto 10 cubiti e mezzo: con scaglie al collo e alla coda: tutto il resto è rosso di color di carne, e con faccia humana, SNSP, XXVI C 1, f. 624. Montanario, Giovan Francesco, In questo libro vi sono notate tutte le cose notabili successe dall’anno 1640, apud Giovan F. M. Notaio di Napoli, Naples, BNN, XIV E 56, ff. 52v Palermo, Emmanuele, La rivoluzione di Naples dell’anno 1647 conosciuta sotto il nome di rivoluzione di Masaniello descritta da E.P. Parte prima dal principio della rivoluzione sino alla morte di Masaniello. 1837, SNSP, XXVIII C 14, ff. 1–296v. Pollio, Giuseppe, Historia del Regno di Naples. Revolutione dell’Anno mdcxlvii insino al mdcxliii scritta dal Reverendo D. G. Napoletano, BNN, X B 7, ff. 2–330v. Raccolta di privilegi, capitoli, bandi, lettere, sonetti, BNN, XIV B 1, ff. 1r–176r. Relazioni da Naples sulla rivolta del 1647; note estratte dall’Archivio di Stato di Firenze. Carte strozziane, SNSP XXVII A 13, ff. 1r–115r. Ricca, Bernardo, Istoria del tumulto di Naples del Mag. Bernardo Ricca, V.I.D. Neapolitano, SNSP, XXVIII C 15, ff. 117.

342 MASANIELLO

Simonetta, Tarquinio, Historia delle rivoluzioni di Napoli dell’anno 1647 scritta dal Dottor T. S. Napoletano, BNN, XV E 49, ff. 1r–519r. Squessa, Cola Jacono, Poemetto in dialetto napoletano sulla rivolta del 1647, SNSP XXVIII D 12, ff. 32v. Tutini, Camillo, Anatomico discorso del Regno di Napoli, BNN, Branc., II A 8, ff. 2r–41v.

2.

Other manuscripts

Altieri, Emilio, Lettere da Napoli, 6 luglio; 9; 13; 16; in ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Napoli, vol. 42, ff. 332r ff. Anonymous, Distinto Ragguaglio della Sollevatione, overo Revolutione seguita nella Città di Napoli li 7 Luglio 1647, ASV, Vat Lat. 11736 (Misc. Arm. III 64), ff. 3r–45v. Anonymous, “A dì 16 Luglio 1647 in Napoli,” BAV Barb. Lat. 7608, ff. 39r–40v. Anonymous, Anticamera di Plutone, BAV, Chigi G VII 211, ff. 103-190v (another copy at the Biblioteca Vaticana is Vat. Lat. 8193, ff. 652r –699r) Anonymous, “Di Napoli li ix di luglio 1647, BAV Chigi G VII 201, ff. 155r–158v. Anonymous, Documento al Manifesto pubblicato dal Popolo Napoletano, BAV, Chigi G VII 211, ff. 45–50v. Anonymous, “Martedì 16 luglio 1647,” BAV, Barb. Lat. 7608, ff. 24r–25r. Anonymous, “Martedì sera,” BAV, Barb. Lat. 7608, ff. 7r–10v. Anonymous, “Molti strani, et incredibili in vero sono” (letter signed “E.B.”, 13 luglio), BAV, Barb. Lat. 7608, ff. 14r–17v. Anonymous, La morte, e sontuoso funerale di Tomaso Aniello d’Amalfi. Con tutte l’altre particolarità et cose nuovamente occorse in Napoli, Dopo la di lui morte sino al giorno d’hoggi, BAV, Vat Lat. 11736 (Misc. Arm. III 64), ff. 47r–105r. Anonymous, “Napoli, 13 di luglio 1647,” BAV, Barb. Lat. 7608, ff. 11r–13r. Anonymous, “Napoli, 13 luglio,” BAV, Chigi G VII 210, ff. 145r–149v. Anonymous, “Napoli, 16 luglio,” BAV, Chigi G VII 210, ff. 150r–152r. Anonymous, “Napoli, 20 luglio,” BAV, Chigi G VII 210, ff. 153r–155r. Anonymous, “Napoli, 16 di luglio 1647,” BAV, Barb. Lat. 7608, ff. 33r–34v. Anonymous, “Napoli, 20 di luglio 1647,” BAV, Barb. Lat. 7608, ff. 45r–47r. Casanatense Anonymous, Narrazione della rivolta ( fino al marzo 1649), Biblioteca Casanatense, ms. 4258, ff. 2r–491. Anonymous, Relaçion del tumulto sucedido en Napoles, en siete de Julio deste año de 1647, BNM, 2378, ff. 311–316. Anonymous, Relaçion de los tumultos sucedidos en Napoles, BNM 2378, 317–324r. Anonymous, Relatione della sollevatione della città di Napoli dell’anno 1647, ASV, Misc. Armadi III 2, ff. 355r–362v.

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Anonymous, Relatione della sollevatione seguita in Napoli alli 7 Luglio 1647 sino alla morte di Tommaso Aniello, BAV, Chigi G VII 210, ff. 47r–62r. Anonymous, Relatione del sollevamento seguito nella Città di Napoli alli 7 di luglio 1647, BAV, Chigi G VII 210, ff. 42r–44v. Anonymous, Relatione del tumulto Popolare successo in Napoli alli 7 Luglio 1647, Naples 9 July 1647, BAV, Chigi G VII 210, ff. 119r–130r. Anonymous Relatione del tumulto successo nella città di Napoli dalli 7 sino alli 30 di luglio 1647, BAV, Chigi G VII 210, ff. 103–117r. Anonymous, “Sign. Mio,” BAV, Chigi O I 8, f. 13r ff. Anonymous, “Signor mio, / In questa” (letter of 13 July), BAV, Barb. Lat. 7608, ff. 18r–21v. Anonymous, Succinta Relatione della sollevatione di Napoli occorsa nel presente anno 1647 a 7 di luglio giorno di Domenica sino alla morte di Tommas’Aniello, BAV, Chigi G VII 210, ff. 63r–102r. Spinola, Carlo, Lettera al Serenissimo governo di Genova del 9 luglio. Altra lettera del 18 luglio, in ASG, Napoli, Lettere consoli 1642–1653, 2640. Vita di Masaniello cioè sue fortune nella Ribellione suo Comando, honori e morte dal Sig. D. Capiciolatro nel tempo istesso di detta Ribellione divisa in quatordeci giornate undici vivente detto Massaniello, e 3 doppo la morte di esso, con la morte del Abbate Gio Antonio Grassi uno de Congiurati in detta morte al detto Masaniello, BAV, Urb. Lat. 1746, ff. 328 [vol. I]. Vol. II. Di Relationi diverse di Giustitie fatte in Napoli molte delle quali seguite in tempo di Massaniello et altre doppo la Ribellione di alcuni Capi di essa, BAV, Urb. Lat. 1747, ff. 409. Vol.III. Delle Revolutioni di Napoli cioè la congiura di Giovannello, Simon Valenzo Peroni, e Filippo Colonna e sue morti. Congiura contro don Peppe Carafa assieme con altri Prencipi, e morte di esso. Morte di Gasparo Tosi morto nella Revolutione. Morte di Pellegrino di Gio. Angelo cognato di Masaniello, BAV, Urb. Lat. 1748, ff. 202.

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Amatore, Diego. Napoli sollevata. Bologna: per gli eredi del Dozza, 1650. Baldacchini, Michele. Storia Napoletana dell’anno 1647 scritta da M. B. Naples: Stamperia di F. Ferrante & Co., 1863 (1st edition Lugano, 1834). Eguía de Beaumont, Francisco. Varios discursos sobre la dedicatoria y Reducion de Napoles 1647. Mantua: Carpentana, 1649. Bisaccioni, Maiolino. Historia delle guerre civili di questi ultimi tempi. Bologna: C. Zenero, MDCLIII.

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Bulifon, Antonio. Giornali di Napoli dal MDCXLVII al MDCCVI. Edited by Nino Cortese. Naples: Società Napoletana di Storia Patria, 1932. Buraña, Juan Baptista. Batalla peregrina entre amor y fidelidad concluida mediante la gracia del mas excelente Sacramento al S.mo dela Eucharestia, con portentoso triumpho delas mas armas de España, exemplar obediencia de la fedelissima ciudad y pueblo de Napoles. Mantoa Carpentana: [no press],1651. Capece, Vincenzo Maria. L’état de la republique de Napoli sous le gouvernement de monsieur le duc de Guise, traduit de l’italien par M.M. Turge-Loredan. Paris: Chez F. Leonard, 1679. Capecelatro, Francesco. Degli Annali della città di Napoli di don F. Capecelatro, parti due (1631–1640). Naples: G. Nobile, 1849. Capecelatro, Francesco. Diario di F. C. contenente la storia delle cose avvenute nel reame di Napoli negli anni 1647–1650 ora per la prima volta messo a stampa. Edited by Angelo Granito. Naples: G. Nobile, 1850, 3 vols. Celoro Parascandolo, Giovanni. Cronache inedite della rivoluzione di Masaniello. Naples: Nuove Edizioni Ciesse, 1985. Conti, Vittorio. Le leggi di una rivoluzione. I bandi della repubblica napoletana dall’ottobre 1647 all’aprile 1648. Naples: Jovene, 1983. Id. La rivoluzione repubblicana a Napoli e le strutture rappresentative, 1647–1648. Florence: Cet, 1984. D’Errico, Gian Luca. Masaniello. Milan: Il Corriere della Sera, 2020. De Blasiis, Giuseppe. “Le Giustizie eseguite in Napoli.” Archivio storico per le province napoletane, IX, I (1884): 104–154. Della Torre, Raffaele. Dissidentis disciscentis receptaeque Neapolis. Insulis, 1651 (also in Raccolta di tutti i più rinomati scrittori dell’Istoria Generale del Regno di Napoli. Naples: G. Gravier, MDCCLXX, tome. VIII). De Lorraine, Henri, Duke of Guise. Le memorie del fu signor duca di Guisa. Cologne: della Piazza, 1675, 2 vols. de Raymond de Mormiron, Esprit, count of Modène. Mémoires du comte de Modène, sur la révolution de Napoli de 1647, publiée par Mielle. Paris: Chez Pélicier et Chatel, 1827, tome I (first edition, Paris, 1665–1667). Saavedra y Ramírez, Ángel. Insurrection de Naples en 1647. Paris: Amyot, 1849, tome I. De Santis, Tommaso. Historia del tumulto di Naples. Leyden: Elsevir, 1652. De Tarsia, Pablo Antonio. Tumultos de la ciudad y reyno de Napoles en el año 1647 por don Pablo Antonio de Tarsia, doctor en sagrada theologia, y Abbad de San Antonio, patronato de Su Casa, en la ciudad de Conversano. Lyons: 1670. Di Franco, Saverio. “Le rivolte del regno di Napoli del 1647–48 nei manoscritti napoletani,” Archivio storico per le province napoletane, CXXV (2007), pp. 327–457.

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Donzelli, Giuseppe. Partenope liberata overo Racconto dell’Heroica risolutione fatta dal Popolo di Napoli per sottrarsi con tutto il Regno dall’Insopportabil Giogo delli Spagnoli. Naples: O. Beltrano, 1647 (in fact 1648). Filomarino, Ascanio. Lettere del cardinal Filomarino in Palermo, Francesco, edited by. “Narrazioni e documenti sulla storia del Regno di Napoli dall’anno 1552 al 1667,” Archivio storico italiano, IX (1846): 379–393. Frezza, Fabio. Discorsi intorno ai remedii d’alcuni mali ai quali soggiace la città, & il Regno di Napoli con altre scritture concernenti il servitio & l’utile di Sua Maestà. Naples: Longo, 1623. Fuidoro, Innocenzo. Successi del governo del conte d’Oñate MDCXLVIII–MDCLIII. Edited by Antonio Parente. Naples: Lubrano, 1932. Fuidoro, Innocenzo. Successi historici raccolti dalla sollevatione di Napoli dell’anno 1647. Edited by Anna Maria Giraldi and Marina Raffaeli, foreword by Rosario Villari. Milan: FrancoAngeli, 1994. Giraffi, Alessandro. Le rivolutioni di Napoli. Venice: Per il Baba, 1647. Giraffi, Alessandro. An exact historie of the late revolutions in Naples; and of their monstrous successes: not to be parallel’d by any ancient or modern history, published by the Lord Alexander Giraffi in Italian and for the rareness of the subject rendred to English by James Howell Esqr. London: R. Lowndes at the White Lion, 1650. Giraffi, Alessandro. An exacte historie of the late revolutions (part I); A.M. for A. Roper and T. Dring. London 1652, part II [also in A History of the late revolutions in the Kingdom of Naples. Florence: CET, 1987, edited by Vittorio Conti]. Giraffi, Alessandro. Het Eerste Deel Der Napelsche Beroerte Met de wonderlijcke Op- en Onder-gangh van Mas’Aniello. Uyt het Italiaensch Vertaelt door L.v.B. Amsterdam: Nicolaeus van Ravesteyen, 1650 (reprinted in 1652). Giraffi, Alessandro. Wonderlijcken Op ende Ondergang van Tomaso Anello, Met de beroerten tot Neapolis. In het Italiaens beschreven door den Heer Alexander Giraffi, Vertaelt door I.V.C. Harlem: Vincent Casteleyn, 1650 (reprinted in 1652). Giraffi, Alessandro. Het eerste (tweede) deel der Napelsche Beroerte, met de wonderlicke op- en ondergang van Mas’Aniello. Uit het Italiensch vertaelt druck nel Regno di Napoli [translator unkown]. Amsterdam: J.F. Stam, 1657. Giraf f i, Alessandro. Kurtze warhaf fte Beschreibung. Deβ gefährlichen weitauβsehenden vnd annoch währenden Auffstands. So sich das vewichene 1647. Jahr in dem Monat Julio. No place, 1648. Giraffi, Alessandro. Kurtze warhaffte Beschreibung, in Theatri Europaei Sechster und letzter Theil oder historische Beschreibung der denckwürdigsten Geschichten vom Schlederum, Ratispona Batavorum. Franckfurt am Main: Bey Weyl, Matthaei Merians Seel. Erben, 1663, pp. 166–226.

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Palermo, Daniele. “Un viceré e la crisi. Il marchese di Los Veles nella rivolta palermitana del 1647.” Librosdelacorte.es, nº 4, año 4 (invierno-primavera, 2012): 126–140. Palumbo, Genoveffa. “Ut pictura istoria. La rivolta napoletana del 1647–’48. Le rappresentazioni figurate e antica storiografia,” Atti dell’Accademia pontaniana, n.s., vol. XIV 1996 (1997): 115–142. Panico, Guido. Il carnefice e la piazza. Crudeltà di stato e violenza popolare a Napoli in età moderna. Naples: ESI, 1985. Parker, Geoffrey. Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013. Pastore, Alessandro. Veleno. Credenze, crimini, saperi nell’Italia moderna. Bologna: il Mulino, 2010. Pelizzari, Maria Rosaria. La penna e la zappa. Alfabetizzazione, culture e generi di vita nel Mezzogiorno moderno. Salerno: Laveglia, 2000, chapter III. “Alfabeto e fisco: l’alfabetizzazione nel Settecento.” Peytavin, Michèle. Visite et gouvernement dans le royaume de Naples (16–17 siècles). Madrid: Casa de Velasquez, 2003. Preuss, Evelyn. “Christian Weise’s Masaniello: Rewriting the Peace of Westphalia.” Focus on Literatur, vol. 5, no. 2 (1998): 85–105. Prota-Giurleo, Ulisse. I teatri di Napoli nel’600. La commedia e le maschere. Naples: Fiorentino, 1962. Quagliarella, Pier Tommaso. La Rivoluzione di Masaniello ed il Cardinale Ascanio Filomarino. Pagnotta: Naples, 1920. Rak, Michele. Il sistema delle feste nella Napoli barocca. In Cantone, Gaetana (ed.), Barocco napoletano. Rome: Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, 1992, pp. 299–327. Ribot, García, Luis. La revuelta antiespañola de Mesina: causas y antecedentes 1591–1674, Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid, 1983. Ricci, Giovanni. Il principe e la morte. Corpo, cuore, effigie nel Rinascimento. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1998. Ricci, Saverio. “La libertà corre sui mari. Dai canali di Amsterdam, dalle acque del Tamigi, al golfo di Napoli,” Masaniello. Edited by Aurelio Musi. Naples: Elio de Rosa, 1994, pp. 38–41. Rengenier, Rittersma. Mytho-poetics at Work: A Study of the Figure of Egmont, the Dutch Revolt and Its Influence in Europe. Leiden: Brill, 2018. Romano, Antonio. Memorie di Tommaso Aniello d’Amalfi detto Masaniello. Responsabilità della Chiesa nella sconfitta della rivolta napoletana d’indipendenza antispagnola 1647–’48. Rome: Scipioni, 1990. Rovito, Pier Luigi. “La rivoluzione costituzionale di Napoli 1647–1648.” Rivista storica italiana, XCVIII (1986): 367–462.

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Rovito, Pier Luigi. Il viceregno spagnolo di Napoli. Naples: Arte Tipografica, 2003. Sallmann, Jean-Michel. Naples et ses Saints a l’âge baroque (1540–1750). Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1994. Schifano, Jean-Noël. Chroniques Napolitaines. Naples: Pironti, 1986. Id. La danza degli ardenti. Translated by Felice Piemontese. Naples: Pironti, 1988. Scrittori politici dell’età barocca: Botero, Ammirato, Settala, Boccalini, Tassoni, Zuccolo, Micanzio, Genoino, Spinola, Sammarco, Malvezzi, Accetto, Contarini, e altri autori anonimi. Edited by Rosario Villari. Rome: Istituto poligrafico della Zecca dello Stato, 1995. Schipa, Michelangelo. “La cosiddetta rivoluzione di Masaniello (1913) and La mente di Masaniello (1918).” In idem. Studi masanielliani. Edited by Giuseppe Galasso. Naples: Società napoletana di Storia Patria, 1998. Signori, patrizi e cavalieri in Italia centro-meridionale nell’età moderna. Edited by Maria Antonietta Visceglia. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1992. Sirago, Maria. “Andrea d’Avalos, Principe di Montesarchio, generale dell’«armata del mar Oceano» (1613–1709).” Archivio storico per le province napoletane, CXXV (2007): 173–209. Sodano, Giulio. Da baroni del Regno a grandi di Spagna. Gli Acquaviva d’Atri. Naples: Guida, 2012. Sodano, Giulio. “Le aristocrazie napoletane.” Il Regno di Napoli nell’età di Filippo IV (1621–1665). Edited by Giovanni Grancaccio and Aurelio Musi. Naples: Guerini, 2014, pp. 138–143. Spagnoletti, Angelantonio. Principi italiani e Spagna nell’età barocca. Milan: Mondadori, 1996. Ventura, Piero. La capitale dei privilegi. Governo spagnolo, burocrazia e cittadinanza a Napoli nel Cinquecento. Naples: FedOA Press, 2018. Ventura, Piero. “Dai codici al cinema: note sulla memoria iconografica della rivolta antispagnola di Napoli.” Visual History. Rivista internazionale di storia e critica dell’immagine, IV (2018): 43–64. Verga, Marcello. “La Spagna e il paradigma della decadenza italiana tra Seicento e Settecento.” Alle origini di una nazione. Antispagnolismo e identità italiana. Edited by Aurelio Musi. Milan: Guerini e Associati, 2003, pp. 49–81. Villari, Rosario. The Revolt of Naples. Translated by James Newill with the assistance of John Marino. London: Polity Press, 1993. Villari, Rosario. Ribelli e riformatori dal XVI al XVII secolo. Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1979. Villari, Rosario. Piazza Mercato. 10 luglio 1647 in Napoli. Una storia per immagini. Naples: Macchiaroli, 1985, pp. 318–321. Villari, Rosario. Elogio della dissimulazione. La lotta politica nel ‘600. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1987.

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Villari, Rosario. “The Neapolitan Financial crisis of the 1630s and 1640s.” In Good Government in Spanish Naples. Edited and translated by Antonio Calabria and John A. Marino. New York: Peter Lang, 1990, pp. 237–274. Villari, Rosario. Per il re o per la patria: la fedeltà nel Seicento. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1994. Villari, Rosario. ‘The rebel.’ Baroque personae. Edited by Rosario Villari, translated by Lydia G. Cochrane. Chicago, IL & London: The University of Chicago Press, 1995, pp. 100–125. Villari, Rosario. “Napoli ribelle e fedele.” Fra storia e storiografia. Scritti in onore di Pasquale Villani. Edited by Paolo Macry and Angelo Massafra. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1995, pp. 551–557. Villari, Rosario. Un sogno di libertà. Napoli nel declino di un impero 1585–1648. Milan: Mondadori, 2012. Vincenti, Giovanni. Gli uccisori di Masaniello. Naples: G.M. Priore, 1900. Visceglia, Maria Antonietta. Il bisogno di eternità. I comportamenti aristocratici a Napoli in età moderna. Naples: Guida, 1988. Visceglia, Maria Antonietta. “‘La giusta statera de’ porporati.’ Sulla composizione e rappresentazione del Sacro Collegio nella prima metà del Seicento.” Roma moderna e contemporanea, I (1996): 167–211. Visceglia, Maria Antonietta. Identità sociali: la nobiltà napoletana nella prima età moderna. Milan: Unicopli, 1998. Viterbo, Michele. Da Masaniello alla Carboneria. Bari: Laterza, 1962. Van Gelderen, Martin. “A Political Theory of the Dutch Revolt and the Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos.” Il Pensiero politico, XIX (1986): 163–181. Von Reumont, Alfred. Naples under Spanish Dominion: The Carafas of Maddaloni, and Masaniello. London: G. Bell & Sons, 1853. Yearsley, David. “The Musical Patriots of the Hamburg Opera. Matheson, Keiser, and Masaniello furioso.” In Patriotism, Cosmopolitism, and National Culture in Hamburg 1700–1933. Edited by Peter Uwe Hohendahl. Amsterdam-New York: Rodopi B.V., 2003.

5.

Sources for the study of the myth

a) Seventeenth Century

Anne, Carlo Lelio. Partenope offesa. Breve Racconto delli pietosi successi di Napoli composta da Carlo Lelio Anne. In BOGN, 28. 3. 13, ff. 253r–256v. Anonymous. Anticamera di Plutone. In Branc. II F 7, ff. 69r–117r (partly in Mondo antico in rivolta). Anonymous. Relazione della pestilenza accaduta in Napoli l’anno 1656. Edited by Giuseppe de Blasiis. Archivio storico per le Province Napoletane, I, 1876: 323–357.

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Anonymous. Sonetti e canzoni tratti da un ms. che si possiede dal sig. Rocco Mormile. Sonetto caudato d’incerto autore nommai pubblicato. Peppone=Giuseppe Carafa di Maddaloni, e Masaniello=Lazzaro Napoletano, ff. 13r–18v; Canzonetta composta da coloro ch’erano del partito opposto a quello di Masaniello. f. 16r-v; Contro i Lazzari Napoletani, ff. 17r–18v; – Rebuffo alli Spagnoli fatto allo Posto della doana. Composto dall’Affritto accademico abbesognuso. Naples, MDCXLVIII, ff. 19r-23v, ms. S. Mart. 705. Baldassarre Bonifacii. Ludicra Historia. Venice: apud Baleonium, 1652, vol. I, 744–748. Eritreo, Giano Nicio. Pinacotheca altera imaginum illustrium. Coloniae Ubiorum [Cologne]: J. Kalconium, 1660. Granatezza, Angelo Tobia. Masaniello trionfante, 1649. In Masaniello nella drammaturgia europea, pp. 106–110. Howell, James. “A History of the Late Revolutions in the Kingdom of Naples […]” A.M. for Abel Roper and T. Dring, 1652, in idem. A History of the late Revolutions in the Kingdom of Naples. Edited by Vittorio Conti. Florence: CET, 1987. Howell, James. Epistolae Ho-elianae. New Volume of Familiar Letters, Partly Philosophical, Political, Historical. London: St. Paul’s Church Yard, 1655, 2 vols. Howell, James. Parthenopoeia, or the History of the Most Noble and Renowed Kingdom of Naples with the Dominions Therunto Annexed and the Lives of All Their Kings. London: H. Moseley, 1654. Melosio, Francesco. Lamento di Marinetta. In Masaniello nella drammaturgia europea e nella iconografia del suo secolo, pp. 99–100. Kohler, Johannes-Lucas, Jean-Maximilien. Le vite di Spinoza. Edited by Roberto Bordoli and Filippo Mignini. Macerata: Quodlibet, 1994. Loredan, Giovan Francesco. Il cimiterio. Epitaffi giocosi Centurie quattro. In L’Iliade Giocosa del Sign. Gio. Francesco Loredano nobile veneto. Venice: H. Gilet, MDCLIV.3 Mantegna, Gioseffo. Masaniello delirante. In Idem. Capricci rettorici. Venice: Herz, 1649. Mondo antico in rivolta (Napoli 1647–48). Edited by Aurelio Musi and Saverio Di Franco. Manduria-Bari-Rome: Lacaita, 2006. Pepe, Stefano. Quaresimale del padre D. S.. Venice: per F. Storti, 1658. Riaco, Carlo Francesco. Il giudicio di Napoli. Discorso del Passato Contagio rassomigliato al Giudicio Universale. Perugia: per di Tommasio, 1658. Rubino, Andrea. Notitia di quanto è occorso in Napoli dal 1648 per tutto l’anno 1657 scritta dal Dottor A. R. in Archivio storico per le province napoletane, XIX (1894): 696–709. Siri, Vittorio. Del Mercurio overo Historia de’ correnti tempi di V.S. Lyon: Gio. Ant. Huguetan et Marc’A. Rauaud, 1652, tome X. T. B. The Rebellion of Naples or The Tragedy of Massenello. Edited and introduced by Mario Melchionda, in Drammi masanielliani nell’Inghilterra del Seicento. Florence: Olschki, 1988.

360 MASANIELLO

Viaggiatori britannici a Napoli tra ‘500 e ‘600. Edited by Giovanni Capuano. Salerno: Laveglia, 1994. Viaggiatori britannici a Napoli nel ‘700. Edited by Giovanni Capuano. Naples: La città del sole, 1999.

b) Eighteenth century

Anonymous. Compendio istorico della rivoluzione e controrivoluzione di Napoli. Edited by Luigi Lerro. Naples: Magmata, 1999, pp. 32–33. Corvo, Nicola. Masaniello azzoé li remmure de Napole. Edited by Antonio Marzo. Naples: Benincasa, 1997. Histoire de la Révolution du Royaume de Naples, dans les Années 1647 & 1648. Par Mademoiselle de Lussan. Paris: Pissot, MDCCLVII. De Saint-Non, Jean-Claude Richard. Voyage Pittoresque ou description des Royaumes de Naples et de Sicilie. Paris: de Clousier, 1781–1786, vol. IV. Doria, Paolo Mattia. Massime del governo spagnolo a Napoli. Edited by Vittorio Conti, with an introduction by Giuseppe Galasso. Naples: Guida, 1973. D’Urfey, Thomas. The Famous History of the Rise and Fall of Massaniello, in two parts. London: Printed for J. Nutt, 1700. In Drammi masanielliani nell’Inghilterra del Seicento. Edited by Mario Melchionda. Florence: Olschki, 1988, pp. 173–213. Faßmann, David. Gespräche in dem Reiche derer Todten: Hundert sechs und sechtzigste Entrevue, zwischen dem berühmten schweitzer Wilhelm Tell und … Masaniello. Leipzig: 1732. Feind, Barthold. Masagniello Furioso Oder Die Neapolitanische Fischer-Empörung, Musicalisches Schau-Spiel. In Id. Deutsche Gedichte. Stade: Hinrich Brummer, 1708. Giannone, Pietro. Dell’istoria civile del regno di Napoli. Naples: G. Gravier, 1770, tome XV. Meißner, August Gottlieb. Masaniello, ou la Révolution de Naples, Fragment historique, traduit de l’allemand. Vienna, MDCCLXXIX. Meißner, August Gottlieb. Masaniello und Spartacus. Mannheim, no publisher, 1800. Midon, Francis. The History of the rise and fall of Masaniello, the fisherman of Naples, containing an Exact and Impartial Relation of the Tumults and Popular Insurrections, that happened in that Kingdom (in the Year) on Account of the Tax upon Fruits. London: printed for C. Davis and T. Green, MDCCXXIX, also in The Pig’s meat; or, Lessons for the people alias (according to Burke) The Swinish multitude, published in weekly penny numbers. London: T. Spence-Little Turnstile-High Holborn, 1793-1795, vol. III.

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Masaniello ou Le pécheur Napoletain. Drame Historique en quatre actes. Words by M.M. Moreau and La Fortelle, music by Michele Carafa. Paris: Frère, 1831. Oliva, Francesco. Natole acquietato. Poema Arpjeco de D.F.A. BNN, ms. XIV G 42. Oliva, Francesco. Napole accoietato: poema aroieco. Naples: Virgilio, 1849. La poesia dialettale napoletana. Testi e note. Edited by Enrico Malato, with a preface by Gino Doria. Naples, Esi, 1960, vol. I, pp. 327–334.

c) Ninenteenth Century

“Il Masaniello. Giornale quotidiano.” Naples, 12 luglio, 1860. “Masaniello. Spassatiempo de Napole e trentaseje casale.” Published by Tommaso Ruffa, I (1862). “Masaniello. Gazzettino politico-amministrativo-sociale-artistico.” I, (1874). “Masaniello. Giornale politico quotidiano.” I (1883). “Masaniello. Giornale del popolo napoletano.” I (1890). Anonymous. “Masaniello da ll’auto Munno /Scrive a Lo Popolo Napoletano.” In Benevento, Biblioteca Provinciale, Mellusi, E XLIII 289 (25, the text is signed “D.C.”). Anonymous. Primma chiacchiariata ‘ntra Masaniello, e lo Popolo Napoletano. Benevento, Biblioteca Provinciale, Mellusi, XLII 289 (46), signed by “E.”. Arrighi, Giuseppe Maria. Saggio storico per servire di studio alle rivoluzioni politiche, e civili del regno di Napoli. Naples: Stamperia del Corriere, 1809, tome II. Auber, Daniel-François-Esprit. La muette de Portici. Honneur, honneur et gloire. Paris: Richault and London, 1825. Botta, Carlo. Storia d’Italia continuata da quella del Guicciardini fino al 1789. Lugano: C. Storm and L. Armiens, 1839, vol. I. Carafa de Colorano, Michele. Masaniello ou Le pêcheur Napolitain [Spectacle]: drame historique en quatre actes / décors de J.J.C.; musique de Michele Carafa; livret de Charles-François-Jean-Baptiste Moreau de Commagny et A.-M. Lafortelle. Paris: chez l’Auteur [first decades of the nineteenth century: staged in 1827]. Ciarlone, Michele. Ricordi di Napoli. Masaniello o Napoli nel 1647 dramma storico in cinque parti di M.C. Naples: Salvatore de Angelis, 1876. Cuoco, Vincenzo. Saggio storico sulla rivoluzione di Napoli. Edited by Antonino De Francesco. Manduria: Lacaita, 1998. Cuomo, Vincenzo. “La statua di Masaniello,” La Lega del bene, VIII, n. 24 (1893): 2–3. Cajo da Montemulliano. Storia della insurrezione di Napoli nel 1647, Vita di Masaniello. Liberatore del Popolo napoletano, tratta dalla memoria del Duca di Rivas e fatta sulla narrazione degli storici Giraffi, De Turris, De Santis, Baldacchini, Capecelatro, Brusoni, Conte di Modena, Principe di San Giorgio, Florence, ecc. Milan: F. Pagnoni, 1860.

362 MASANIELLO

Castorina, Domenico. Masaniello (1849), introd. by Aurelio Musi. Naples: Langella Edizioni, 2022. De Mirecourt, Eugéne. Masaniello. La marquis de Noircastel. Paris: G. Havard, 1858. Id. Masaniello ou une Révolution a Naples. Paris: Librairie Moderne-Gustave HavardLibraire-éditeur, 1860. De Renzi, Salvatore. Tre secoli di rivoluzioni napoletane. Naples: G. Nobile, 1866. De Virgilii, Pasquale. Masaniello. Dramma storico. Bruxelles: [no publisher], 1840. Dumas, Alexandre. Il Corricolo. Edited by Gino Doria. Naples: Colonnese, 2004. Id. Il Masaniello. Edited by Luigi Furfaro, translated by Eugenio Torelli Viollier. Naples: Bagarì, 2020. Dunbar, Robert Nugent. Garibaldi at the Opera of ‘Masaniello’. London: Robert Hardwicke, 1864. Fogli volanti di Napoli e Sicilia del 1848–49. Edited by Salvatore Vitale. Rome: Istituto poligrafico dello Stato, 1956. Fresenius, August. Thomas Aniello: Trauerspiel in fünf Aufzügen. Frankfurt am Main: auf Kosten der Mutter und Geschwister des Verfassers, 1818. Frost, Thomas. Masaniello or the fisherman of Naples. London: Purkess, 1852. Garruccio, Giovanni. Il Masaniello, ossia memorie storiche sulla rivoluzione di Napoli dell’anno 1647, raccolte da cronache antiche da G. G. Naples: Tipografia dell’Autore, 1848. Genevay, Antoine. I drammi della storia. La congiura dei Fieschi. Masaniello. Wallenstein. Le Memorie di Don Ramos. Storia di una casa regnante. Gli avvoltoi del Bosforo. Milan: Fratelli Treves, 1879. Giraffi, Alessandro. I Napoletani al 1647. Cronica di dieci giorni della Rivoluzione di Mas’Aniello corredata di annotazioni. Naples: Tipografia dell’Arno, 1860. Miss Holford. Italian stories, translated by Miss Holford, author of ‘Wallace’, Warbeck of Wolfstein etc. London: J. Andrews, 1823. Izzo, Filippo. La muta di Portici. Masaniello. Gran ballo storico diviso in sei parti. Naples: Cosmopolita, 1861. La Cecilia, Giovanni. Il Masaniello o la rivoluzione di Napoli nel 1647. Livorno: G. Antonelli, 1848, 3 vols. Lady Morgan (Sydney Owenson). Italy. London: H. Colburn, 1821. Ead., The Life and the Times of Salvator Rosa. Paris: Eymery, 1824. Lockwood, Henry. Masaniello and other poems. London: Kerby & Endean, 1883. Mariani, Mario. Masaniello. Romanzo storico popolare. Milan: Natale Tommasi, 1891. Mazuy, Françoise. Masaniello Passé et Avenir de Naples Monologue. Marseille: Librairie Provençale Boy, 1861. Mazzini, Giuseppe. Ai Giovani. Ricordi (1848). In Id. Opere. Edited by Salvatorelli, 2 vols., Milan-Rome: Rizzoli, 1939.

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M.C.L. Masaniello, Histoire du Soulèvement de Naples en 1647. Paris: Chez les marchands de Nouveautés, 1828. Morandi, Felicita. Masaniello ossia Gloria e pazzia. Milan: L. F. Cogliati, 1898. Nocchi, Raffaello. Masaniello. Dramma. Lucca: Tipografia Benedini di L. Guidotti, 1847. Oliva, Francesco. Lo revuoto de Masaniello. Poema Arojeco scompartito ‘ntra vinte cante. Naples: Fratelli Agnelli, 1848. Parente, Alfredo. Masaniello: storia del secolo 17. Florence; Batelli e figli, 1838. Ribeyrolles, Charles. Le Compagnos de la mort. Révolt de Masaniello en 1647 Précedé d’une notice sur l’auteur par F. Dabadie. Paris: Ferd. Sartorius, 1863. Ricciardi, Giuseppe. Masaniello ovvero Storia della Rivoluzione di Napoli del 1647, narrata alla gioventù. Naples: A. Morano, 1879. Roscoe Saint John, Horace Stebbing. Masaniello of Naples. The Record of a Nine-Days Revolution. London: Tinsley Brothers, 1865. Rusconi, Antonio. Masaniello. Cenni storici. Novara: Rusconi, 1848. Rusconi, Carlo. I tribuni: Masaniello, Cola di Rienzi, Ciceruacchio, Michele di Lando, Balilla. Rome: Edoardo Perino, 1890. Id. I tribuni: Masaniello, Cola di Rienzi, Ciceruacchio, Michele di Lando, Balilla. Rome: Edoardo Perino, 1890. Sabbatini, Giovanni. Masaniello. Dramma in cinque atti. Turin: Stamperia sociale degli artisti tipografi, 1848. Id. Drammi storici e memorie concernenti la storia segreta del teatro contemporaneo, Turin: M. Caffaretti, 1864, vol. I. Scribe, Eugène and Delavigne, Germain. Masaniello ovvero La muta di Portici. Opera in cinque atti con balli analoghi di Scribe e Germano Delavigne, musica del maestro D.F. Auber. Benevento: no press, 1862. Soane, George, Masaniello, The Fisherman of Naples, an Historical Play, in Five Acts. London: John Miller, 1825. Spadetta, Almerindo. Masaniello. Grande opera napoletana divisa in un prologo e cinque parti. Music by Giovanni Valente. Milan: Stabilimento musicale di Lucca, 1862. Zeller, Jules. Épisodes de l’Histoire d’Italie, par J. Z., professeur a la Faculté des Lettres d’Aix, Les Vespres Siciliennes. Nicolas Rienzi. La Prise de Rome par le connétable de Bourbon. Masaniello et le duc de Guise. Paris: Hachette, 1856. Id. Les tribuns et les révolutions en Italie: Jean de Procida, Armand de Brescia, Nicolas Rienzi, Michel Lando, Masaniello. Paris: Didier, 1874.

d) Twentieth Century

“Masaniello: politico, letterario scientifico.” Directed by da Barone Guzzardi, I, 1913. Compagnone, Luigi. Ballata e morte di un capitano del Popolo. Turin: Rusconi, 1974. Costagnola, Aniello. Apoteosi e morte di Pulcinella. Naples: S. Morano, 1914.

364 MASANIELLO

Costagnola, Aniello. Napoli che se ne va. Naples: Giannini, 1918. Croce, Benedetto. Storia e leggende napoletane. Milan: Adelphi, 1991. Croce, Benedetto. Storia del regno di Napoli. Edited by Giuseppe Galasso. Milan: Adelphi, 1992. Croce, Benedetto. “Celebrità del Pulcinella. Pulcinella simbolo del proletariato Napoletano.” In Idem. Saggi sulla letteratura del Seicento. Bari: Laterza, 1911. De Filippo, Edoardo. “Tommaso d’Amalfi.” In Idem. Cantata dei giorni dispari. vol. III. Turin: Einaudi, 1966. Di Giacomo, Salvatore. “Nascita, matrimonio e morte di Masaniello,” Celebrità napoletane. Trani: V. Vecchi, 1896, pp. 75–91. Doria, Gino. Il napoletano che cammina e altri scritti sul colore locale aggiuntavi la canzone del Guarracino. Milan-Naples: Riccardo Ricciardi, MCMLVII. Ghirelli, Antonio. La Napoletanità. Un saggio-inchiesta di A.G. Naples: Società Editrice Napoletana, 1976, pp. 46–47. Ghirelli, Antonio. Napoli italiana. La storia della città dopo il 1860. Turin: Einaudi, 1977. Hay, Mary. Mas’Aniello. A Neapolitan Tragedy. London: Constable, 1913. Leatham, James. Masaniello, the Fisherman who made a Revolution. Cottingham: Cottingham Press, 1914. Mario, E.A. Masaniello. Naples, 1960. Petrone, Icilio. “L’epica di Masaniello.” Il Giornale d’Italia, 3 Oct. 1934. Porta, Elvio and Pugliese, Armando. “Masaniello.” Sipario, 343 (1974): 56–77. Rea, Domenico. Pulcinella e ‘la canzone di Zeza’. Naples: Esi, MCMLXVIII. Schipa, Michelangelo. Albori di Risorgimento nel Mezzogiorno d’Italia, Introd. by Gioacchino Volpe. Naples: Miccoli, 1938. Striano, Enzo. Il resto di niente. Preface by Francesco Durante. Cava de’ Tirreni: Avagliano, 1997.2 Viviani, Vittorio. Mas’Aniello. Tragedia popolare in tre atti musica di Jacopo Napoli. Milan-Naples: Ettore Novi, no date.

7.

Essays about the myth of Masaniello

Abbate Badin, Donatella. “Giacobini irlandesi e Napoletani a confronto in Italy di lady Morgan,” Novantanove in idea: linguaggi miti memorie. Edited by Augusto Placanica and Maria Rosaria Pelizzari. Naples: Esi, 2002, pp. 309–332. Abbate Badin, Donatella. Lady Morgan’s Italy: Anglo-Irish Sensibilities and Italian Realities. Bethesda, MD: Academica Press, 2007. Albert, Jean-Pierre. “Du martyr à la star. Les métamorphhoses des héros nationaux,” in Pierre Centilivres-Daniel Fabre-Françoise Zonabend, La Fabrique des Héros. Paris : Maison des Sciences de l’homme, 1998.

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Auteri, Laura. “Masaniello.” Dizionario dei personaggi. Turin: UTET, 2003, vol. II, pp. 1265–1266. Battafarano, Italo Michele. “Alessandro Giraffi und Christian Weise.” In Idem, Von Andreae zu Vico. Untersuchungen zur Beziehung zwischen deutscher und italienischer Literatur im 17. Jahrhundert. Stuttgart: Akademischer Verlag HansDieter Heinz, 1979, pp. 107–170. Battafarano, Italo Michele. “Von der Chronik zum Trauerspiel. Alessandro Giraffi und Christian Weise über den Aufstand des Masaniello in Neapel (1647).” Daphnis, 11 (1982); 277–285. Battafarano, Italo Michele. “Zu den historischen Quellen des Masaniello-Bildes in Deutschland: Alessandro Giraffi, Theatrum Europeum, Christian Weise,” Studi tedeschi, 27 (1984): 259–262. Il Monitore Napoletano 1799. Edited by Michele Battaglini. Naples: Guida, 1974. Benigno, Francesco. “Trasformazioni discorsive e identità sociali. Il caso dei lazzari.” Storica, 31, (2005): 7–44. Benigno, Francesco and, Daniele. Di Bartolomeo. Napoleone deve morire. L’idea di ripetizione storica nella rivoluzione francese. Rome: Salerno editrice, 2020. Calaresu, Melissa. “Looking for Virgil’s Tomb: The Grand Tour and the Cosmopolitan Ideal in Europe,” Voyages and Visions. Towards a Cultural History of Travel. Edited by Jan Elsner and Joan Pau. London: Reaktion Books, 1999. Calvi, Giulia. “L’oro, il fuoco, le forche: la peste napoletana del 1656.” Archivio storico italiano, CXXXIX (1981): 405–458. Cantù, Francesca. “Spagnolismo e antispagnolismo nella disputa del Nuovo Mondo.” Alle origini di una nazione. Antispagnolismo e identità italiana. Edited by Aurelio Musi. Milan: Guerini e Associati, 2003, pp. 135–160. Cohn Jr, Samuel K. “Authority and Popular Resistance.” The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern European History, 1350–1750, vol. II, Cultures and Power. Edited by Hamish Scott. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015, pp. 418–439. Colletta, Pietro. Storia di Napoli. Edited by Anna Bravo. Turin: UTET, 1975. Comparato, Vittor Ivo. “La Repubblica Napoletana del 1647/48: Partiti, idee, modelli politici.” Il Pensiero Politico, XXXI, 2 (1998): 205–239. Comparato, Vittor Ivo. “Pietro Giannone e la rivoluzione napoletana del 1647.” L’età dei Lumi. Studi storici sul Settecento europeo, in onore di Franco Venturi. Naples: Jovene, 1980, vol. II, pp, 793–835. Comparato, Vittor Ivo. “From the Crisis of Civil Culture to the Neapolitan Republic of 1647: Republicanism in Italy between the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries.” Constitutionalism in Early Modern Europe, vol. I, Republicanism and Constitutionalism in Early Modern Europe, edited by Martin van Gelderen and Quentin Skinner. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp. 169–194.

366 MASANIELLO

Croce, Benedetto. “Salvator Rosa.” In Saggi sulla letteratura italiana del Seicento. Bari: Laterza, 1911, pp. 317–359. Croce, Benedetto. La rivoluzione del 1799, with comment by Fulvio Tessitore, Naples: Bibliopolis, 1998. Croce, Benedetto. “Il tipo del napoletano nella commedia.” In Idem. Saggi sulla letteratura italiana del Seicento. Bari: Laterza, 19624 . Croce, Benedetto. “I ‘lazzari’ negli avvenimenti del 1799.” In Idem. Un paradiso abitato da diavoli. Edited by Giuseppe Galasso. Milan: Adelphi, 2006, pp. 96–114. De Liso, Daniela. La scrittura della storia. Francesco Capecelatro (1594–1670). Naples: Loffredo, 2004. De Liso, Daniela. Da Masaniello a Eleonora Pimentel. Napoli tra storia e letteratura. Naples: Loffredo, 2016. D’Alessio, Silvana. “Un’esemplare cronologia. Le rivolutioni di Napoli di Alessandro Giraffi (1647).” Annali dell’Istituto Italiano per gli studi Storici, XV (1998): 287–340. D’Alessio, Silvana. “Masaniello’s Revolt: A ‘Remedy’ for the English Body Politic.” Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theatre Research, 17, 1–2 (2002): 10–19. D’Alessio, Silvana. “Un’ultima punizione. Napoli, 1656.” Il Pensiero Politico, 2 (2003): 325–334. D’Alessio, Silvana. “Masaniello durante il Risorgimento,” Il Risorgimento, vol. LXVI, 1 (2019): 29–71. D’Alessio, Silvana. “Alle radici del mito. Masaniello nella storiografa sulla sua rivolta.” In Rivolte e rivoluzione nel Mezzogiorno d’Italia 1547–1799. ManduriaBari-Rome: Piero Lacaita editore, 2008: 347–376. Dean, Dennis R. “Morgan, Sidney.” Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004, vol. 39, pp. 141–143. De Dominici, Bernardo. Vite de pittori, scultori ed architetti napoletani. Naples: F. and C. Ricciardo, MDCCXLII. De Francesco, Antonio. “La rappresentazione della Spagna nella cultura napoletana tra rivoluzioni e Restaurazione.” In Alle origini di una nazione. Antispagnolismo e identità italiana. Edited by Aurelio Musi. Milan: Guerini e Associati, 2003, pp. 227–244. De Rienzo, Eugenio. “Le due rivoluzioni.” Nazione e controrivoluzione nell’Europa contemporanea 1799–1848. Edited by Eugenio di Rienzo. Milan: Guerini e Associati, 2004, pp. 9–83. Fulco, Giorgio. “La fortuna letteraria.” Masaniello. Edited by Aurelio Musi. Naples: Elio de Rosa, 1994, pp. 42–47. Galante Garrone, Alessandro and Della Peruta, Franco. La stampa italiana del Risorgimento. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1978.

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Galasso, Giuseppe. Da Mazzini a Salvemini. Il pensiero democratico nell’Italia moderna. Florence: Le Monnier, 1974. Galasso, Giuseppe. La democrazia da Cattaneo a Rosselli. Florence: Le Monnier, 1982. Giuliano, Laura, Introduction in Camillo Tutini. De’ pittori, scultori, architetti, miniatori et ricamatori napolitani e regnicoli, edited by Giuliano, presentation by Francesco Caglioti. Matera: Edizioni Giannatelli, 2021. Hill, Christopher. “The Many-Headed Monster in Late Tudor and Early Stuart Political Thinking.” In From the Renaissance to the Counter-Reformation. Essays in Honor of Garrett Mattingly. Edited by Charles H. Carter. New York: Random House, 1965, pp. 296–324. Iacolare, Salvatore. “Rivoluzioni napoletane. Tra storia e epos.” In Sottosopra. Indagine su processi di sovversione. Edited by Chiara Allocca, Francesca Carbone, Rosa Coppola, and Beatrice Occhini. Quaderni della ricerca, 6. Naples: UniorPress, 2020, pp. 297–310. Naples in the Eighteenth Century. Edited by Girolamo Imbruglia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Lovejoy, David Sherman. The Glorious Revolution in America. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan, 1987. Masaniello. Edited by Aurelio Musi. Naples: Elio de Rosa, 1994. Mascilli Migliorini, Luigi. “L’eroismo civile alle radici della contemporaneità,” In L’eroe. Carriera e metamorfosi nel mondo moderno. Edited by Cesare Mozzarelli. Cheiron, III, 6 (1986): 105–120. Mascilli Migliorini, Luigi. “Il Risorgimento.” In L’Italia moderna e l’unità nazionale. Edited by Giuseppe Galasso and Luigi Mascilli Migliorini. Turin: UTET, 1998, pp. 597–640. Mastellone, Salvo. “Mazzini’s International League in the Light of the London Democratic Manifestos (1837–1850).” Giuseppe Mazzini and the Globalization of Democratic Nationalism. Proceedings of The British Academy, London, 8–9 December 2005. Il Pensiero Politico XXXVIII, 3 (2005): 446–453. Meijer Drees, Marijke. “The Revolt of Masaniello on Stage: An International Perspective.” From Revolt to Riches: Culture and History of the Low Countries, 1500–1700. Edited by Theo Hermans, Reinier Salverda, and Ulrich Tiedau. London: UCL Press, 2017, pp. 207–213. Mellone, Viviana. Napoli 1848. Il movimento radicale e la rivoluzione. Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2017. Moe, Nelson. The View from Vesuvius: Italian Culture and the Southern Question. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002. Monaco, Gabriele. Cinque secoli di storia della parrocchia di Masaniello. Naples: Laurenziana, 1974.

368 MASANIELLO

Monsagrati, Giuseppe. “La Cecilia, Giovanni.” Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani. Rome: Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Treccani, vol. 63, 2004, pp. 25–29. Montano, Aniello. Pulcinella. Dal mimo classico alla maschera moderna. Naples: Libreria Dante & Descartes, 2003. Moscati, Ruggero. Giovanni la Cecilia e le sue memorie in Il Mezzogiorno d’Italia nel Risorgimento, ed altri saggi. Messina-Florence: Casa ed. d’Anna, 1953. Musi, Aurelio. “Chiesa, religione, dimensione del sacro nella rivolta napoletana del 1647–’48” in Dimenticare Croce? Studi e orientamenti di storia del Mezzogiorno. Edited by Aurelio Musi. Naples: ESI, 1991, pp. 43–72. Musi, Aurelio. “L’antispagnolismo come mito negativo della fondazione nazionale italiana: il ruolo di Sismondi. Appunti per una ricerca.” In L’identità nazionale. Miti e paradigmi storiografici ottocenteschi. Edited by Amedeo Quondam and Giacomo Rizzo. Rome: Bulzoni, 2005, pp. 21–29. Musi, Aurelio. Alle origini di una nazione. Antispagnolismo e identità italiana. Milan: Guerini e Associati, 2003. Musi, Aurelio. Masaniello: Il masaniellismo e la degradazione di un mito. Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2019. Niola, Marino. Sui palchi delle stelle. Napoli, il sacro, la scena. Rome: Meltemi, 1995. Novi Chavarria, Elisa. Il governo delle anime. Azione pastorale, predicazione e missioni nel Mezzogiorno d’Italia: secoli 16–18. Naples: Editoriale Scientifica, 2001. Novi Chavarria, Elisa. “Orefice, Giovanni,” DBI, vol. 79 (2013). Novi Chavarria, Elisa. “Corte e viceré.” In Il Regno di Napoli nell’età di Filippo IV, pp. 103–133. Pedio, Tommaso. Massoni e giacobini nel Regno di Napoli. Emmanuele de Deo e la congiura del 1794. Matera: Montemurro, 1976, pp. 358–359. Quondam, Amedeo. Dal Manierismo al Barocco, in Storia di Napoli. Cava de’ Tirreni, Arti grafiche Di Mauro, 1970, vol. iv, to. i, pp. 337–640. Rak, Michele. “La tradizione letteraria popolare-dialettale napoletana tra la conquista spagnola e le rivoluzioni del 1647–48.” Storia di Napoli. Cava de’ Tirreni: Arti grafiche Di Mauro, 1974, vol. IV, tome II, pp. 573–729. Rao, Anna Maria. Esuli: l’immigrazione politica italiana in Francia, 1792–1802. With a preface by Giuseppe Galasso. Naples: Guida, 1992. Rao, Anna Maria. La repubblica napoletana del 1799. Rome: Newton Compton, 1997 [reprinted in Naples: FedOA, 2021]. Ricuperati, Giuseppe. Pietro Giannone. Bilancio storiografico e prospettive di ricerca, in Pietro Giannone e il suo tempo. Atti del Convegno di studi nel trecentenario della nascita, edited by Raffaele Ajello. Naples: Jovene, 1980, vol. i, pp. 199–230. Robertson, John. The Case for the Enlightenment Scotland and Naples 1680–1760. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

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Rossi, Lauro. Mazzini e la rivoluzione napoletana del 1799. Ricerche sull’Italia giacobina. With a postface by Carlo Zaghi. Manduria: Lacaita, 1995. Ryall, Lucy. Garibaldi. L’invenzione di un eroe. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2007. Scafoglio, Domenico. Lazzari e giacobini. Cultura popolare e rivoluzione a Napoli nel 1799. Naples: L’Ancora, 1999. Scafoglio, Domenico. Michele ‘o pazzo e la Repubblica partnopea. Casamicciola Terme: Valentino, 2000. Scirocco, Alfonso. Garibaldi. Battaglie, amori, ideali di un cittadino del mondo. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2001. Silke, Leopold. Feinds und Keisers Masagniello furioso Eine politiche Oper? ­Hamburger Jahrbuch für Musikwissenschaft, V (1981): 55–68. Toma, Piero Antonio. Giornali e giornalisti a Napoli 1799–1999. With an introduction by Antonio Ghirelli and Ermanno Corsi. Naples: Grimaldi & C., 1999. I Giornali di Napoli: 1799–1861. Naples: L. Torre, 1982. Venturi, Franco. “L’Italia fuori d’Italia” in Storia d’Italia. Vol. III. Dal Primo Settecento all’Unità. Edited by Giuseppe Galasso. Turin: Einaudi, 1973, pp. 87–1481. Villani, Stefano. “Un Masaniello quacchero: James Nayler.” Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa, 33, 1 (1997): 68–91. Villani, Stefano. “La prima rivoluzione inglese nelle pagine del Mercurio di Vittorio Siri.” L’informazione politica in Italia (secoli XVI–XVIII). Atti del seminario organizzato dalla Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa e dal Dipartimento di Storia moderna e contemporanea dell’università di Pisa, 23 e 24 giugno 1997. Edited by Emanuele Fasano Guarini and Mario Rosa. Pisa: Scuola Normale Superiore, 2001, pp. 137–172. Villari, Rosario. Elogio della dissimulazione. La lotta politica nel Seicento. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1987. Wallace, Walter. “Masaniello e il folklore della violenza politica.” Comunità, 193–194 (1992): 191–218. Zazo, Alfredo. Il giornalismo a Napoli nella prima metà del secolo XIX. Naples: Procaccini, 1985.2 Zielinski, Jan. “Siatkóva Spinozy, sieć Masaniella…” in „Zeszyty Literackie” 2011 H. 114.

Index Abl Stefan 123 Accetto Torquato 105 Agliati Carlo 297 Ajello Raffaele 41, 99, 255 Alba, Duke of: see Álvarez de Toledo Antonio 89, 227 Albert Jean-Pierre 281 Alfano Giancarlo 236 Altieri Emilio 163, 196, 197 Altizzone Michelangelo: see Ardizzone Álvarez de Toledo Antonio, Duke of Alba, viceroy of Naples 89, 227 Amatore Diego 208, 218, 219 Amendola Domenico 236 Ametrano Nicola 46, 74, 115, 169, 293, 294 Andreu Francesco 49 Anne Carlo Lelio 229 Annese Gennaro 14, 22, 144, 148, 221, 228, 229, 235 Aquino Ladislao d’, Bishop of Venafro 67, 68 Arcoleo Giorgio 319-21 Arcos, Duke of: see Ponce de León Ardizzone Giovan Battista 189 Ardizzone Michelangelo (or Altizzone) 88, 115, 172, 173, 182, 185, 189, 192, 203 Arpaia Francesco Antonio, eletto del popolo 49, 52, 106, 107, 140, 142, 153, 164, 165, 173, 182, 185, 195, 199, 222, 231, 257 Arrighi Giuseppe Maria 270 Ascione Imma 99 Asch Ronald G. 27 Ascoli, prince of: see Leiva Antonio di. Asseljn (Asselyn) Thomas 140 Astarita Tommaso 11, 27, 82 Auber Daniel François Esprit 272, 273 Auteri Laura 251 Avalos Andrea d’, Prince of Montesarchio 20, 71, 107, 115, 181 Avalos Giovanni d’, Prince of Montesarchio 107 Baldacchini Michele 269, 274-76, 315 Baldacchini Saverio 274 Balilla: see Perasso Giovannino Banti Alberto Mario 289 Barbaro Antonio 60 Barbato Marcello 236 Barbosa Agostino 218 Barbuto Gennaro Maria 239 Barile Antonio 99 Barile Francesco 99, 100 Barile Giovann’Angelo, Duke of Caivano 43, 99 Barionovi Luigi 145 Basciano Andrea 90, 96, 115

Basile Felice, eletto del popolo 97, 104 Basile Giambattista 99 Battafarano Italo Michele 249 Battaglini Mario 265 Battaglino Giovanni 20, 21, 181 Battista Giuseppe 236 Beaumont Eguía de 90, 143 Benaiteau Michèle 36, 40, 347 Benigno Francesco 12, 29, 30, 47, 49, 71, 173, 263 Benzoni Gino 238 Bianco Giovanni 133, 149, 228 Bisaccioni Maiolino 30, 31, 76, 212 Blanco (Blanch) Thomase (Tommaso) 160 Boerio Davide 242 Bonifacio Baldassarre 237 Bordoli Roberto 247 Borgia, Cardinal: see Borja y Velasco Gaspar de. Borja y Velasco Gaspar de, Cardinal Borgia, viceroy of Naples 49 Borrelli Gianfranco 217 Boyer Ferdinand 303 Bracco Roberto 318 Brancaccio Carlo 46, 52, 111 Brancaccio Giovanni 45, 108 Brancaccio Lelio, Marquis of Montesilvano 115 Bravo Anna 267 Bray Massimo 68 Brutus Junius 248 Bulifon Antonio 89 Buonomo Giovanni Battista 189 Buraña Giovanni Battista 218 Burke Edmund 261 Burke Peter 16, 58, 247 Cacace Giovan Carlo 74 Cafarelli (o Caffarelli) Fausto, Archbishop of Santa Severina 154, 168 Cafiero Onofrio 32, 110, 172 Caio Mario 237, 310 Caivano, Duke of: see Barile Giovann’Angelo Calabria Antonio 42 Calaresu Melissa 27, 263, 264 Calisto Micone 189 Calvi Giulia 238 Cambi Maurizio 36 Campanella Tommaso 329 Campanile Giuseppe 43, 56, 57, 59, 72, 76, 114, 124, 173, 178 Campolieti Giuseppe 97, 174 Cantú Francesca 195 Capaccio Luise 72 Capasso Bartolommeo 31, 61, 74, 76, 79, 80, 271, 312-17, 331 Capece Vincenzo Maria 232

372 MASANIELLO Capecelatro Carlo, Duke of Siano 115 Capecelatro Ettore 46 Capecelatro Francesco 20, 42, 44, 45, 47, 48, 51, 52, 57, 65-68, 72, 79, 88, 92, 94, 96, 106, 111, 117, 118, 121, 132, 136, 145, 153, 155, 156, 158-160, 173, 175-177, 179, 181, 186-189, 191-194, 197, 200, 203, 204, 207, 210, 211, 227 Capograssi Antonio 29 Capuano Giovanni 246 Caputo Niccolò 72, 95 Caracciolo Ambrogino 210 Caracciolo Antonio 160 Caracciolo Carlo 66 Caracciolo Carlo Andrea, Marquis of Torrecuso 209, 210 Caracciolo Ferrante, Prince of Santo Buono 43, 87, 90, 111, 191 Caracciolo Giuseppe, Prince of Torella and Atena 115 Caracciolo Titta di Santo Buono 115 Carafa, family 44, 120, 197 Carafa Diomede, Duke of Maddaloni 39, 43, 48, 69, 93, 94, 178 Carter Charles H 16. Carafa Fabrizio 123 Carafa Giuseppe 43, 69, 113, 115, 120-29, 154, 197, 225, 231 Carafa Gregorio, prior of la Roccella 115, 120 Carafa Marzio 178 Carafa Michele 274 Carafa Tiberio, Prince of Bisignano 55, 60, 63 Carini Giacinto 303 Charles II Stuart 246, 330 Charles V 13, 17, 33, 65, 66, 70, 76, 93-95, 104, 105, 128, 131, 138, 141, 145, 160, 215 Carrese Tommaso (Mase), Masaniello’s brother in law, 61, 328 Carusi Francesco 211 Carutti Domenico 299 Casanate (o Casanatte) Mattia de 111, 160 Casteleyn Vincent 241 Castellano Francesco 236 Catania Carlo, baker 90, 104, 115, 172, 173, 189, 190, 315, 321, 324 Catania (Catanio) Giuseppe 115 Catania Mattia 34 Catania Salvatore 172, 173, 185, 189, 190, 192, 216, 257 Catone Andrea 61, 80 Cattaneo Carlo 297 Ceccarelli Alessia 258 Cecere Domenico 347, 352 Ceci Giuseppe 82 Centilivres Pierre 282 Cesarano Antonio (Vito Tonno) 149, 151, 195 Cesareo Giovanni Alfredo 16, 271 Cianno 153 Ciarlone Michele 311 Ciceruacchio (Angelo Brunetti) 289

Cimarosa Domenico 320 Cimmino Mercurio da Corchiano 18, 74, 203 Ciommo Gioè 149 Cirillo Giuseppe 36, 349 Claro Giulio 218 Cochrane Lydia G. 23 Cocitore Pietro 189 Cocozza Andrea 189 Cohn Samuel K. Junior 2, 15, 16, 27 Colapietra Raffaele 41 Colletta Pietro 267, 293 Colonna Pompeo, Prince of Gallicano 49 Compagnone Luigi 313, 329-31, 334 Comparato Vittor Ivo 13, 41, 88, 89, 254 Coniglio Giuseppe 88 Conti Vittorio 228, 244, 253 Coode John 245 Cordova Luis de 57 Correra Luigi 65 Corsi Ermanno 306 Cortese Giulio Cesare 232 Cortese Nino 89 Corvo Nicola 253, 255, 257 Costagliola Aniello 313, 316, 318-21, 329, 332 Croce Benedetto 264-265, 271, 280, 293, 321, 322, 325, 333 Croce Lidia 332 Cromwell Oliver 244, 245 Cummins Stephen 122 Cuoco Vincenzo 253, 266 Cuomo Vincenzo 61, 311 D’Agostino Paola 123 Dandelet Thomas 27 Dauverd Céline 27, 45 D’Amalfi Antonio Carmine, Masaniello’s brother 80 D’Amalfi Francesco, father 61, 78 D’Amalfi Giovanni Battista, brother 71, 73, 76, 80, 81, 90, 142, 151, 158, 159, 177, 193 D’Amalfi Grazia Francesca, sister 61, 80 d’Ammelino Giuseppe 153 D’Andrea Francesco 99 D’Andrea Vincenzo 18, 72, 108, 221 Dean Dennis R. 271 de Angelis Francesco Antonio 45, 97, 98 de Apuzzo Pietro 90 de Benedictis Angela 17, 242 De Blasiis Giuseppe 235, 239 Decani (o Deciano) Tiberio 218 de Caro Masillo (Tommaso) 189, 190 de Cordova Luis 57 de Cristofaro Giacomo 36 Decroisette Françoise 56 De Dominici Bernardo 271 de Ferrante Aniello 189, 190 De Filippo Eduardo 313, 326-28, 333, 335 De Fiore Tommaso 56, 83, 90, 121, 122, 144, 151, 208, 212

373

Index

De Francesco Antonio 263, 266, 270 De Frede Carlo 45, 81 de Gennaro Pompeo 160 de Juilly Baudot (Mademoiselle de Lussan) 78, 261 Delavigne Germain 269, 272, 273, 276, 277 De La Ville Sur-Yllon Ludovico 132 Del Bagno Ileana 41, 43, 172 De Leva Pietro 148 del Ferro Luigi 48 Della Gatta Carlo, Prince of Monasterace 160 Della Moneca Tizio 20, 21, 35, 47, 50, 55, 59, 60, 61, 65, 72, 74, 75, 81, 85, 87, 91, 94-97, 99101, 104, 110, 114, 115, 117, 128, 153, 159, 160-62, 167, 171, 172, 181, 184, 188, 189, 201, 206, 207 Della Porta Aniello 56, 59, 61, 155, 180, 189, 192, 208, 211 De Liso Daniela 42 de Lorraine Henri, Duke of Guise 13, 20, 40, 221, 225, 227, 228, 230-32, 241, 262, 266, 289 De Lussan Mademoiselle: see de Juilly Baudot De Maio Romeo 113, 212, 240, 333 De Martino Ernesto 201, 207 De Medici Vincenzo 79 De Miranda Girolamo 40 de Mirecourt Eugène 277 Den Bos Lambert van 246, 247 Denina Carlo 14, 15 De Renzi Salvatore 303, 304 De Rosa Luigi 113 De Rossi Antonio 236 de Rossi (o de Rubeis) Giuseppe 154, 156 De Sanctis Francesco 280, 319 De Santis Michele (Anjello) 123, 231 De Santis Tommaso 45, 51, 62, 66, 90, 93, 105, 107, 108, 117, 118, 126, 135, 143, 145, 171, 172, 183, 185, 192, 198, 199, 205, 206, 208, 211 de Satis Adriana 80 de Satis Domenico 80 de Satis Nuncio 80 De Seta Cesare 42 De Simone Gioseppe 62-64, 66 De Simone Roberto 74, 232, 238 de Staël Germane 271 De Virgilii Pasquale 280-82, 299, 311, 325 De Vito Gioseppo 230 de Witt brothers 247 Di Bartolomeo Daniele 263 Di Franco Saverio 35, 36, 47, 79 Di Giacomo Salvatore 313-16 di Lando Michele 14, 289 Di (o de) Lieto Agostino 232 Dini Vittorio 29, 31, 36, 84, 216, 247, 253, 329 di Palma Onofrio 72 Di Rienzo Cola 289, 297 Di Rienzo Eugenio 50 di Roma Cesare 61 di Sanguino Giuseppe 115 Donnarumma Girolamo 197, 334

Donzelli Giuseppe 39, 40, 57-59, 65, 71, 73, 96, 99, 100, 105, 110, 116, 118, 123, 126, 133, 136, 140, 144, 157-59, 169-71, 177, 182, 183, 185-87, 191, 193, 194, 197, 198, 206-08, 214, 225, 317 Dooley Brendan 350 Doria Giannettino 135, 186 Doria Gino 255, 323, 333 Doria Paolo Mattia 253 Dumas Alexandre 269, 272, 276, 277, 303, 317 Dunbar Robert Nugent 305, 306 Durante Francesco 334 D’Urfey Thomas 246, 251 E.A. Mario 313 Ekk Nicolaj 325 Elliott John Huxtable 12, 17, 33 Elsner Jas 263 Enciso Recio Luis Miguel 113 Engels Friedrich 282 Esposito Roberto 36, 156 Este Ercole d’ 204 Este Lionello d’ 204 Este Niccolò d’ 204 Fabre Daniel 264, 282 Facerella Giovannella 150 Facerella (o Taverella) Peppe 150 Fanzago Cosimo 122, 123, 157 Farinacci Prospero 218 Fasano Guarini Elena 258 Faßmann David 241, 251 Fattorusso Giuseppe 56 Frederick, king of Aragon 305 Feind Barthold 251 Ferdinand I of Aragon (Ferrante, King of Naples) 215 Ferdinand II of Bourbon, King of the Two Sicilies 277, 280, 301 Ferdinand IV of Bourbon, King of the Two Sicilies and King of Naples 269 Feroce Carlo 235 Ferrante Pier Paolo 238 Fiorelli Vittoria 351 Filomarino Ascanio, cardinal 17, 18, 35, 67, 68, 69, 88, 103, 104, 107, 111, 116-19, 131, 134, 138, 161, 163, 196, 198, 199, 217, 230, 278, 336, 337 Filomarino Francesco (Marcantonio) 107 Filomarino Francesco Maria, Prince della Rocca d’Aspide, 107, 115 Filomarino Marcantonio 107 Filomarino Scipione 68 Fiomara Lello 235 Fiordelisi Alfonso 100, 116, 180, 181, 312 Fiore, Captain of Lazzari 236 Fiorelli, Vittoria 373 Fiorentino Katia 75 Fonzeca Antonio 235 Fraga Joana 12, 75

374 MASANIELLO Francis II of Borboun, King of the two Sicilies 301, 321 Frascani Federico 327 Frezza Fabio 89 Fruci Gian Luca 15 Fuidoro Innocenzo 18, 40, 41, 43, 44, 4748, 57, 62, 71-73, 79, 81, 82, 97, 100, 101, 108, 110, 114, 118-22, 124-26, 138-40, 144, 157, 159, 171, 175, 184, 192-94, 197-206, 208-10, 271 Fulco Giorgio 17, 129, 237 Galasso Giuseppe 12, 16, 18, 19, 29, 30, 36, 41, 42, 46, 50, 56, 66, 68, 77, 82, 92, 107, 126, 132, 174, 195, 201, 227, 238, 253, 263, 264, 270, 292, 293, 301, 306, 322 Galli Carlo 156 Gargano Antonia, Masaniello’mother 79, 315, 316 Gargano Damiano, Masaniello’s brother-in-law 14 Garibaldi Giuseppe 289, 300-06, 321 Garruccio Giovanni 290 Garzillo Carlo Francesco 230 Garzoni Tommaso da Bagnocavallo 217 Genoino Giulio 18, 19, 30, 31, 33, 39, 49-51, 66, 69, 72, 85, 91, 94, 95, 99, 103, 105, 106, 107, 111, 118, 139, 140, 142, 164, 165, 167, 173, 175, 179, 181, 182-85, 190, 193, 195, 200, 222, 242, 243, 257, 281-83, 290, 299, 310, 322, 327, 335, 336 Ghirelli Antonio 35, 306, 325, 332 Gianfrancesco Lorenza 40, 41, 347 Giannattasio Giuseppe 61 Giannattasio Raimondo 61 Giannattasio Scipione (Pione) 63 Giannelli: see Guallecchia Francesco Giannone Pietro 253-55, 276, 293 Ginsborg Paul 289 Ginzburg Carlo 58 Giordano Bruno 261 Giovanni (o Cianno) 153 Giraffi Alessandro 11, 13-16, 18, 19, 23, 34, 35, 48, 58, 61, 72-74, 76, 78, 85, 91, 93, 97, 98-100, 105, 110-113, 116, 117, 120, 122, 124, 127, 134, 140-42, 143, 144, 145, 155, 156, 158, 160, 162, 163, 167-72, 182-84, 187-89, 191, 192, 200, 217, 219, 237, 241-44, 247-50, 253, 255, 257-60, 304, 315 Giraldi Anna Maria 41, 81, 124 Gonin Francesco 290 Granatezza Angelo Tobbia 232 Granito Angelo, Prince of Belmonte 20, 44, 47, 312 Granville George 306 Grasso Bernardino (o Antino) 115-17 Grassus Jacobus 230 Greco Franco Carmelo 333 Greco Giuseppe 189 Grimaldo Donato 106 Groeben Christiane 36, 74, 249, 251

Guallecchia Francesco (Giannelli) 150 Guarino Gabriel 27, 56 Guglielmo Tell 241, 251, 311 Guidi Laura 101 Guise, Duke of: see de Lorraine Henri Guzmán de Ramiro Nuñez, Duke of Medina de las Torres, Viceroy of Napoli 41, 124 Harrison Brian 310 Hay Marie 317 Heath James 245 Herrero Sánchez Manuel 12 Hill Christopher 16 Hills Helen 27 Hohendahl Peter Uwe 251 Howell James 11, 19, 172, 241, 242, 244, 259 Hugo Victor 280 Hugon Alain 12, 18, 27, 30, 42, 62, 75, 122, 264 Hume Robert D. 246 Huss (Hus) Jan 261 Iacolare Salvatore 256 Iannella Gina 56, 151 Iglesias María Carmen 33 Illibato Antonio 14, 235 Imperato Francesco 65 Ingersoll Thomas N. 245 Innocent X, Giovan Battista Pamphili, Pope 187, 188 Iovino Giovanni Battista 44 Izzo Filippo 309 Javarone Pietro (or Ciavarone) 109, 114, 281 Jettot Stéphane 12 John of Austria, Philip IV’ son 45, 172 Keiser Reinhard 251 Kohler [Colerus] Johannes 247 Labrot Gerard 92 La Cecilia Giovanni 290, 291, 293-97 Lady Morgan (Sydney Owenson) 15, 269, 271, 272, 277, 304, 310, 317 Lafortelle A.M. 274 Lanario Fulvio 44 Lassels Richard 245 La Vista Luigi 320, 321 Leatham James 261 Ledru Rollin Alexandre 282 Leisler Jacob 245 Leiva Antonio di, prince of Ascoli 140 Leone Nino 52, 83, 126 Lerro Luigi 267 Letizia Geronimo 57, 70, 85, 92, 93, 96, 154 Lista Giuseppe 189 Lofano Francesco 122, 178 Lombardi Satriani Luigi 333 Longobardo Giuseppe 189 Loredan Giovan Francesco 238

Index

Lorizzo Loredana 68, 107, 118 Lovejoy David Sherman 245 Lubrano Cesare 101, 133 Lubrano Francesco 180 Lubrano Giacomo 237 Lucas Jean Maximilien 247 Lumaya, Count of 159 Macchia Giovanni Macchiaroli Gaetano 74, 123 Machiavelli Niccolò 14, 101, 250, 262 Mack Karl 279 Madaro Luigi 78 Maddaloni, Duke of: see Carafa Diomede Magnus Alexander 230 Malherbe-Galy Jacqueline 35 Maiello Aniello, Giovanni’s brother 172 Maiello Giovanni, physician 172 Maione Paologiovanni 274 Malato Enrico 255 Malizia Francesco 236 Manna Pietro 90 Mantegna Gioseffo 237 Manzoni Alessandro 290, 314 Marat Jean Paul 263 Marchese Andrea 43 Marciano Francesco 44 Maria Anna of Austria 218 Mariani Mario 311 Marino John A. 12, 17, 27, 42 Marino Michele (Michele o’ pazzo) 266, 295 Marlowe Christopher 244 Marshall Christopher R. 122 Martini Fritz 249 Martorana Pietro 309 Marx Karl 282 Marzo Antonio 255 Mascilli Migliorini Luigi 274, 292 Mastellone Andrea 72 Mastellone Salvo 99, 305 Matthew Henry Colin Gray 310 Mauro Ida 56, 238 Mayer Carlo Augusto 332 Mayorica Giacomo, friar 72, 74, 76, 79, 95, 100, 101, 102, 119, 128, 137, 143, 153, 160, 162, 176, 177, 184, 185, 187, 189, 190, 192, 207, 211, 214 Mazuy François 304 Mazzarino Giulio 258 Mazzella Scipione 244 Mazzini Giuseppe 14, 36, 269, 270, 278-80, 283, 284, 290-92, 294-96, 300, 301, 305 Mazzucchi Andrea 236 McTighe Sheila 76 Medina de la Torre, Duke of: see Guzmán de Ramiro Nuñez Meijer Drees Marijke 246, 248, 249 Meißner August Gottlieb 253, 262, 263 Melchionda Mario 74, 242, 246 Mellone Viviana 280, 291

375 Melosio Francesco 238 Merle Alexandra 12, 75 Merola Alberto 18 Messina Pietro 17, 26, 40, 46, 291 Midon Francis 124, 253, 259-61, 317 Minguito Palomares Anna 12 Miroballo Antonio 98, 99 Modène, Count of: see Raymond de Mormoiron Esprit de Modugno Domenico Molière 99 Molini Alessandro, friar Sebastiano 74, 90, 103, 131, 197, 202 Monaco Gabriele 72, 270 Monsagrati Giuseppe 291 Montalvo Ramirez Bernardino, Marquis of San Giuliano 115 Montanario Giovan Francesco 39, 75, 80, 81, 83, 120, 124, 155, 191, 198, 211 Montano Aniello 36, 333 Monterey, count of: see Zuñiga y Fonseca Manuel de Montesilvano, Marquis of: see Brancaccio Lelio Montesquieu Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède and de 254 Morales Pietro 189 Morandi Felicita 311 Moratti Francesco 74 Moreau Jean Baptiste 274 Morelli Alemanno 298 Moretti Franco 36 Mosca Antonio 235 Moscarella Pier Tommaso 56 Moscati Ruggiero 291 Moses 62, 230 Moxham Noah 242 Moya Carlos 33 Mozzillo Attanasio 254 Mrozeck Eliszezynski Giuseppe 68, 107, 230 Munns Jessica 230 Murat Joachim-Napoléon 270 Muscetta Carlo 238 Musi Aurelio 11, 12, 18, 26, 29, 30, 31, 36, 40, 42, 45, 47, 49, 50, 69, 72, 75, 89, 91, 101, 108, 129, 160, 186, 195, 240, 247, 263, 274, 275, 310, 317 Mustafà 131, 325 Muto Giovanni 12, 17, 18, 42 Naccarella, family 100 Naclerio Andrea, eletto del popolo 43, 55, 99, 106, 124, 216 Naclerio Gianbattista, judge of Vicaria 99 Nani Gian Battista 254 Napoli Jacopo 324, 326 Napolitano Nicola 49 Nappi Maria Rosaria 271 Nardone Jean-Luc 35, 65 Nerettino 78, 79 Nicolai Agostino 18, 140, 155, 171, 184, 191, 225

376 MASANIELLO Nicolini Fausto 114 Nocchi Raffaele 282, 299 Nocera Patrizia 36 Novi Chavarria Elisa 234, 292 Nutkiewicz Michael 242 Nuzzo Enrico 36 Oliva Francesco (o Auliva) 253, 255-57 Oñate, Inigo Vélez de Guevara, Count of 12, 20, 71, 90, 157, 171, 233, 235, 236, 271 Orefice Antonella 14 Orefice Luigi, prince of Sans (or Sanza) 292 Osuna, Duke of: see Téllez Girón Pedro Ottonelli Francesco 98 Pagliucca Donato 151 Palermo Emmanuele 61, 81, 109, 144, 191, 285, 286 Palermo Daniele 48 Palermo Francesco 67 Palumbo Genoveffa 62 Palumbo Giovan Battista 235 Palumbo Giuseppe 55, 56, 60, 90, 91, 96, 103, 115, 144, 148, 151, 173, 197, 230, 295 Palumbo Onofrio 4, 75 Panico Guido 123 Paolucci Andrea 48 Parker Geoffrey 12, 16, 22, 245 Parmigiano Giuseppe 185 Parrino Domenico Antonio 79, 238, 239 Pastore Alessandro 22 Pau Claris 22 Pedio Tommaso 264, 291 Pelizzari Maria Rosaria 40, 101, 136, 271 Pepe Stefano 239, 240 Perasso Giovannino 289 Perrella Silvio 36 Perrone Carla Chiara 255 Perrone Gregorio 115 Perrone Miccaro 85, 90, 91, 94-96, 103, 111, 113-15, 117, 151, 248 Peta Giovanni Matteo 61, 80 Peters Alaid 74, 248 Petriccione Federico 324 Petrizzo Alessio 15 Petrone Ilicio 323 Philip IV, King of Spain 12, 13, 160, 172, 218, 228, 280, 299 Piacente Giovan Battista 70, 74, 91, 105, 110, 127, 148, 152, 156, 159, 171, 185, 189, 200, 208, 210, 214, 219 Pilati Renata 16 Pimentel de Fonseca Eleonora 253, 264, 265, 333 Piro Francesco 36 Pisa Berardina (o Bernardina) 57, 76, 79, 80 Pisa Giovan Battista 80 Pisa Pietro 80 Pisacane Carlo 300, 301

Pittman Josiah 272 Placanica Augusto 40, 271 Plaisance Michel 56 Polito Andrea 108, 109, 148 Pollio Giuseppe 19, 21, 22, 35, 46, 47, 59, 60, 61, 63, 76, 84, 93, 99, 106, 124, 133, 138, 144, 145, 163, 164, 172, 174, 175, 184, 185, 190-93, 195, 198, 199, 201, 204-207 Ponce de León Luigi, judge of Vicaria 159 Ponce de León Rodrigo, Duke of Arcos, Viceroy of Naples 20, 40, 42, 44, 45, 48, 57, 66, 69, 108, 114, 122, 128, 131, 135, 136, 138, 140, 142, 143, 149, 152, 157-65, 167, 173, 180, 183, 186, 194-96, 200, 202, 209, 213-16, 219, 226, 230, 232, 260, 262, 275, 296, 327 Porta Elvio 42, 313, 334 Preuss Evelyn 249 Priorato Galeazzo Gualdo 210 Pugliese Armando 243, 313, 334 Quaranta Gennaro 209 Quattrucci Mario 274 Raffaeli Marina 41 Ragon Michel 210 Rak Michele 229 Rama Andrea 115, 189 Rao Anna Maria 17, 263-65 Rascaglia Mariolina 36 Ravaschieri Ettore, Prince di Satriano 63 Raymond de Mormoiron Esprit de, count of Modène 39, 40, 63, 94, 109, 116, 117, 124, 219, 253, 257- 62, 317 Raymond Joan 242 Rea Domenico 320 Riaco Carlo Francesco 239 Ribeyrolles Charles 304 Ricci Giovanni 204 Ricci Saverio 247 Richards Penny 230 Ricuperati Giuseppe 254 Rittersma Rengenier 249 Robertson John 241 Roccella, prior of la: see Carafa Gregorio 115, 120 Romani Felice 297, 298 Romano Agostino 235 Romano Antonio 174 Romano Domenico 235 Roomer Gaspare 92 Rosa Mario 258 Rosa Salvator 15, 16, 123, 238, 269, 271, 277-82, 292, 293, 295, 304, 310, 311, 325, 337 Roscoe Mrs: see St. John Horace Stebbing Roscoe 310 Rossi Lauro 270 Rosso Andrea 29 Rota Mario 212 Rovito Pier Luigi 50, 72, 107

377

Index

Rubiés Joan Pau 263 Rubino Andrea 238 Ruffa Tommaso 306, 308 Ruffo Fabrizio, Cardinal 279, 306, 320, 330 Ruoppolo Geronimo (o Ciommo) 150 Rusconi Antonio 286-89, 330 Rusconi Carlo 289 Russo Carla 63 Russo Ferdinando 313, 314, 316 Russo Iacono 151 Russo Marco 36 Sabbatini Giovanni 290, 297-99 Salamanca di Giovanni, senior chaplain 42, 161 Sallmann Jean Michel 207 Salvemini Biagio 12, 292 Sanfelice Giovan Francesco, Duke of Laureana 160 San Giuliano, Marquis of: see Montalvo Ramirez Bernardino 115 Sans, Prince of: see Orefice Luigi 292 Sansone Mario 274 Sauli Ottaviano 65, 116, 121, 135, 144, 153-55, 157, 160, 161, 164, 165, 168-70, 173, 177, 182, 183, 187, 189, 193, 197, 199, 201, 206, 207, 209, 210, 257 Savoia Carlo Alberto, prince of 283 Savoia Carignano Tommaso, Prince of 44, 48, 209 Scacciavento Francesco Antonio 72 Scafoglio Domenico 266, 333 Schipa Michelangelo 19-21, 29-31, 507, 508, 107, 173, 174, 186, 313, 314, 321-23, 325 Scirocco Alfonso 305, 306 Scribe Augustine Eugène 269, 272, 273, 276, 277, 309, 310 Sganzerla Anita Viola 123 Seller Francesca 274 Siano, Duke of: see Capecelatro Carlo Siciliano 115 Silke Leopold 251 Simonetta Tarquino 35, 46, 57, 65, 73, 83, 92, 93, 96, 97, 107, 126, 127, 137, 141, 153, 188, 205 Sirago Maria 20 Siri Vittorio 257, 258 Smith Olivia 261 Soprano Camillo 123 Sorrentino Giuseppe 235 Spadaro Micco 122 Spadetta Almerindo 309 Spagnoletti Angelantonio 12 Spangler Jonathan 230 Spano Cesare 177 Speciale Martino 291 Spence Thomas 261 Spinelli Carlo 45, 111 Spinola Cornelio 45, 50, 65, 74, 89, 90, 108, 160 Spinoza Baruch de 247 Sportiello Giuseppe 101

Squessa Cola Jacono 79 St. John Horace Stebbing Roscoe (Mrs Roscoe) 310 Stella Antonio 136 Storace Giovan Vincenzo Strazzullo Franco Striano Enzo 333, 334 Sullivan Arthur 272 T. B. 242, 244, 246 Tacitus Publius Cornelius 213 Tamerlane 237, 244 Taranto Domenico 36 Telesio Bernardino 261 Téllez Girón Pedro, Duke of Osuna (or Ossuna) 30, 45, 49, 50, 106, 126, 140, 182, 227 Tessitore Fulvio 265 Testoni Binetti Saffo 248 Thoma Giuseppe 133, 134 Tiberius Julius Caesar Augustus 213 Toma Piero Antonio 306, 323 Tommaso d’Aquino 44, 68 Tontoli Gabriele 23, 78, 111, 116-20, 124, 133, 144, 155, 171, 172, 188, 217, 218 Toralto Francesco 227, 228 Torella, Prince of: see Caracciolo Giuseppe Torraca Francesco 280 Torre Luca 31, 303, 307, 313 Trivulzio Teodoro, Cardinal, Viceroy of Sicily 140, 151 Turner William 304, 305 Tutini Camillo 17-20, 26, 46, 49, 51, 52, 55, 63, 69, 71, 75, 77, 80, 81, 91, 92, 97, 100, 104, 105, 107, 108, 109, 114-16, 118, 120-22, 125, 132, 135, 137, 138, 140, 143, 144, 150, 152, 156, 160, 161, 171, 175, 185, 189, 192, 194, 195, 197-201, 203, 204, 213, 217, 219-21, 227 Tuttavilla Prospero 110, 142, 177 Urban VIII, Maffeo Barberini, Pope 68 Valente Giovanni 309 Valenzi Lucia 101 Valeri Elena 18 van Gelderen Martin 13, 248 Vanini Giulio Cesare 261 Ventura Piero 66, 76 Venturi Franco 256, 263, 264, 304, 305 Verde Marino 17, 18, 20, 26, 46, 49, 51, 52, 55, 63, 69, 71, 75, 80, 81, 91, 92, 97, 100, 104, 107, 108, 109, 114-16, 118, 120-22, 125, 132, 135, 137, 138, 140, 143, 144, 150, 152, 156, 160, 161, 171, 175, 185, 189, 192, 194, 195, 197-201, 203, 204, 213, 217, 219-21, 227 Verga Marcello 275 Vernasso Gioseppe 148, 149 Vice-queen, Arcos’wife, Ana Francisca de Cordóba y Aragón 56, 57, 65, 143, 156, 165, 173, 254

378 MASANIELLO Villani Stefano 36, 258 Villari Rosario 12, 13, 16-21, 23, 29, 30, 41, 42, 48-50, 69, 107, 123, 174, 186, 196, 209, 210, 213, 215, 227, 229, 232, 247, 254, 305 Vincenti Giovanni 186, 190, 234 Visceglia Maria Antonietta 18, 214 Visitatore generale (Juan Chacón Ponce de León) 55, 70, 71, 170, 173, 294 Vitale Marco 150, 160, 179-81, 186, 335-337 Vitale Matteo 150 Vitale Salvatore 285 Viviani Raffaele 324 Viviani Vittorio 313, 324-26 Volpe Gioacchino 323 Volpicella Scipione 124 Wallace Walter 243, 274, 333 Wanley Nathaniel 254

Wassing Roworth Wendy 122 Weise Christian 241, 249-51 Weston Giulia Martina 123 Yearsley David 251 Zaccardo Savino 56, 59, 74 Zaghi Carlo 270 Zapata y Cisneros Antonio, cardinal 88 Zeller Jules 289 Zevallos Giovanni 92 Zito Vincenzo 314 Zonabend Françoise 282, 364 Zufia Diego Bernardo 111, 160 Zuñiga Luis Rodriguez 33 Zuñiga y Fonseca Manuel de, Count of Monterey, Viceroy of Naples 40, 41