{ Chapter Six }
At the end of each session Parliament appointed a “deputation” that had the task of executing the resolutions adopted. This body also had the role of representing the Sicilian “nation” to the Spanish government. SE, 169.
Deputation of the Kingdom of Sicily
“homeland law”, however the word patrio does not precisely equate to the English “homeland” since Italy was not a unified state. See below.
Before Italy’s political unification, there was a similarly scant judicial need for a national legal history. In the absence of a “kingdom”… in the better organized territories and cities of Italy, domestic representations of full local or territorial legal histories emerged. The diritto patrio or ius proprium presumed here has been discovered and balanced against the proud ius commune to form a nice, doubly pleasing heritage, ultimately both national and European, that kept Italy pluralistic. Heikki Pihlajamäki, Mark Godfrey, Markus D Dubber, eds., The Oxford Handbook of European Legal History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 67.
compilers and chroniclers of the diritto patrio
In 1708 riots broke out in Palermo over the viceroy’s decision to entrust a bastion of the city, traditionally entrusted to Sicilians, to an Irish regiment. After the departure of the Irish regiment the revolt was quelled. At the time the viceroy was Don Carlo Antonio Filippo Spinola e Colonna, who governed the island from 1703 until October 10, 1713, the date of Victor Amadeus’s arrival in Sicily. AC, 85-86.
the riots
A series of peace treaties signed in 1713 that ended the War of the Spanish Succession. One of the many agreements was the decision to transfer Sicily to King Philip V of Spain’s father-in-law, Duke Victor Amadeus of Savoy.
Treaty of Utrecht
The League of Augsberg, a coalition formed by Austria, the Dutch Republic, Spain, and Sweden in 1686 to counter the expansionist plans of Louis XIV; later called the Grand Alliance when England and Scotland joined the League in 1689.
the League
An actual person, famous for persecuting priests in the Lipari controversy, which is widely referred to in the novel. Natoli refers to Matteo Lo Vecchio as both an algozino and a birro.
His name was Matteo Lo Vecchio
gabellotti
The gabellotto paid the landowner for the use of the land, which he then rented out to peasants. In practice the gabellotto acted as an overseer of the estate. He hired guards (campieri) to protect livestock, equipment, and property, and to control the peasants, who would often be in debt to the gabellotto for the rent, tax, supplies, and seeds for the planting season. By the mid-nineteenth century the gabellotti would eventually overpower the landowners and be the real power in the Sicilian countryside.
In the late nineteenth century, many gabellotti were associated with, if not were members of the mafia. Such alliances would allow them to protect themselves and their assets from bandits and cattle rustlers, as well as cut through many of the messy legalities left over from Sicily’s transition from feudalism to capitalism in the early nineteenth century.
The history of the Beati Paoli is wrapped in mystery, as befits a secret sect. It seems that Luigi Natoli was inspired by the writing of Francesco Maria Emanuele e Gaetani, Marchese di Villabianca, who in 1790 in his Opuscoli Palermitani (Palermo Diaries) cites the secret society of “the Beati Paoli or villainous men”, making it descend from the sect of “wicked and capricious people” called the Vendicosi, considered by Villabianca “thugs and assassins” who would have acted since the Middle Ages in the name of justice denied, renewing itself several times over the centuries.
The name Beati Paoli is also surrounded in mystery. According to Villabianca, a person named Paul would have been the most valiant of the Vendicosi. However, according to the tradition collected by Italian folklorists Giuseppe Pitré and Salvatore Salamone Marino toward the end of the nineteenth century, the name of the sect could have derived from the dress worn by the disciples, a habit similar to that of the monks of San Francesco di Paola, which allowed them, without being noticed, to listen to the stories of the poor people in church. Another possibility is that of Saint Paul, who is celebrated on June 29 or on the night of June 24; according to another tradition, in fact, several people born on such dates would be capable of extraordinary enterprises and predict the future, and precisely in the name of Saint Paul, a secret society would be born, a new version of the ancient Vendicosi. AC, xxvii.
This letter has been sent to you by the Beati Paoli:
The Sicilian piastre was the currency of the Kingdom of Sicily until 1815: 1 onze (gold) = 30 tarì (silver), 1 tarì = 20 grani (copper), 1 grano = 6 piccoli (copper).
Silver pieces of 12 tarì were called scudi.