Calabria, named by the Byzantines, is a peninsula of 5,822 square miles about 150 miles long and 20 miles wide at its narrowest, and separated from Sicily by the Straits of Messina. In ancient times, it encompassed the whole of the foot-shaped section of Italy. Today, the province occupies only the toe and part of the instep. Within the province of Calabria are three subprovinces: Catanzaro, Cosenza, and Reggio di Calabria. Sersale, a hill town in the province of Calabria, is located about 15-20 km north of Catanzaro, just inside the instep.
"Calabria is referred as the Switzerland of the South because of its majestic and magnificent mountains. Calabria is sandwiched between the sparkling turquoise and azure waters of the Ionian Sea to the east and the Tyrrhenian Sea to the west. Calabria's 485 miles of wraparound white-sand coastline contrast vividly with the beautiful, tumultuous mountains that dominate it. And Calabria is blessed with mild weather that prevails most of the year. " ( 5 )
"Calabria is a mosaic of cultures drawn from various people who invaded it over the centuries, resulting in a delightful Mediterranean rhythm. The Greeks, Byzantines, Etruscans, Romans, Saracens, Normans, French and Aragonese each helped form Calabria and southern Italy's character. Customs from Greece, Albania and Provence that originated centuries ago are still practiced in some mountain villages. Despite the layering of cultures, one after another in a continuous cycle of conquest and oppression, this mosaic did not prevent the remarkable Calabrians from preserving their collective soul.
The history of invasions looks back to the Greek colonization in the eighth century B. C. The Greeks brought the Etruscans, Romans and southern Italians in contact with their civilization. In addition to their civilization and political skill, the Greeks brought the art of wine and the olive. The wines from the Calabrian city of Ciro were so prized by the ancient Greeks that they were served in celebration at some of the earliest Olympic games. The Greeks, like the Romans, had a passion for fine food and wine. Ciro wine still ranks high with southern Italians, and olives and olive oil are indispensable to Southern Italian cooking.
From the fifth century B.C. and fifth century A.D. Italian history tells us it was largely that of the Roman Empire. After the collapse of the Roman Empire about 476 A.D., Italy fell under foreign rule. This was followed by a series of epidemics and earthquakes and what was termed the Dark Ages. At the end of the Dark Ages about the tenth century, the Arab world, greatly influenced by Greek culture, possessed exotic spices, herbs, sugar cane, and coffee. Local cuisine was enriched by the Arabs, who brought a variety of fruits, vegetables and spices from the Orient, such as citrus fruits, eggplants, hot peppers, pine nuts, cloves and nutmeg. ( Source: Mary Amabile Palmer. Cucina di Calabria: Treasured Recipes and Family Traditions from Southem ltaly. Boston: Faber and Faber, 1997.5-6.)
Norman conquest begun in 1057 A.D. It was under Roger II where the Normans established the Kingdom of Naples and Sicily. Unlike their rule in England, it was more haphazard and uneven in Southern Italy. The system oflarge landed estates held by the Norman overlords, worked by increasingly impoverished, landless peasants devastated Calabria's economy to such a degree that it took centuries to recover.
For the next successive centuries southern Italy was victim to political vacuums which led to repressive taxation through reigns of the Germans, Emperor Frederick II [1194-1250], up to the end of the fifteenth century when Italy became the battleground of the French, Spanish and Austrian imperialism. Poverty and oppression among the peasants became even more unbearable among the exploitive Spanish, perhaps the harshest of all of Calabria's invaders. As a result of their oppressive rule, the light of the Italian Renaissance of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries barely touched Calabria. Even though the Spanish Inquisition failed to hold in Sicily, it was fiercely imposed in Calabria.
By 1734, Naples and Sicily were ruled by Charles of Bourbon, son of Philip V of Spain, founding the Neapolitan House of Bourbon. In 1759, Ferdinand N of Naples (third son of Charles III of Bourbon) became king of the Kingdom of Naples and Sicily. As a result, Calabria reached the lowest point in its history. By 1805, Napoleon sent his brother Joseph to the Kingdom of Naples and Sicily to punish Ferdinand IV for violating the neutrality Naples had pledged in the Treaty of Florence four years earlier.
The peasants, eternally patient up to this point, were growing resdess and were compelled to rebel. Insurrections in Calabria and Sicily were effected in 1837 and 1844 and were punished by wide scale executions, or banished to galleys or imprisoned for life! Secret political societies formed as the people tired of being forgotten by the national government. Reforms began to evolve in the 1830s and 1840s - reforms that would lead to a united Italy. The people regarded Nicholas Giuseppe Garibaldi [1807-1882] as the one who could not only unify their country but improve living conditions for all. By 1861, the parliament of a newly united Italy met for the first time in Turin, which became Italy's capital. Florence replaced Turin as Italy's capital in 1865 and was subsequently replaced by Rome in 1870. In 1871, the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy completed the unification of Italy.
Unfortunately, life remained unchanged for the southern Italians. Tax monies continued to flow out of the south to the north and poverty continued. This new republic was the same theme they had seen for centuries, only in a different cloak! By 1892, the people were so outraged at the injustice they and their ancestors had endured, resentful of their poor living conditions and enduring caste system, these 'heretofore gentle, passive, and resigned folk ... began thinking of emigrating.' This dissatisfaction grew to enormous proportions in the form of mass migration. By the end of 1924, almost five million had left their beloved ancestral homes! Italy's population was reduced by about one-third; 80 percent were from the Mezzogiorno - the provinces south of Rome, which include Calabria, Basilicata, Campania, Abruzzi, Molise, Apulia and Sicily.
Lured to the Americas by dazzling promises of work and wealth, many decided to leave. The saying of the day was Vami centro lire e mi ni vaiu a La Merica.' Give me a hundred lire and I will go to America." ( 6 )
From George Gissing's memorable trip to Calabria in 1897 we are left with a great sense of what Catanzaro was like at the time the Lias, Capolupos, Gigliottis and Mirarchis were saying farewell to a province their families had known for numerous generations.
"Gissing talks of trains where the carriages are of special construction, light and manyy windowed, so that one has good views of the landscape. Further describing the surrounds, "Very beautiful was this long, broad, climbing valley, everywhere richly wooded; oranges and olives, carob and lentisk and myrtle, interspersed with cactus (its fruit, the prickly fig, all gathered) and with the sword-like agave. Glow of sunet lingered upon the hills: in the green hollow a golden twilight faded to dusk. The valley narrowed; it became a gorge between dark slopes which closed together and seemed to bar advance. . .. I looked up to a mountain side, so steep that towards the summit it appeared precipitous, and there upon the height, dimly illumined with a last reflex of after-glow, my eyes distinguished something which might be the outline of walls and houses. This, I knew, was the situation of Catanzaro. Conveyed by diligenza to Catanzaro, Gissing watched its loading with luggage and mailbags.
The driver caled Pronti! and they began their journey to the city. Ascended down a long loop of the road at an easily tolerable angle as the horse bells tinkled where they finally reached Catanzaro an hour later where the streets were wider. As he stepped out on to the balcony of his room he contemplated the earthquakes the people had experienced in this mountain town. Recalling the worst calamity recorded was towards the end of the eighteenth century, where scarce a house remained standing, and many thousands of people perished. This seemed to explain the peculiarity in the aspect of the place; "it is like a town either half built or half destroyed, one does not know which; everywhere one comes upon ragged walls, tottering houses, yet there is no appearance of antiquity. One ancient building, a catle built by Robert Guiscard when he captured Catanzaro in the eleventh century, remained until of late yearss, its Norman solidity defying earthquakes; but this has bee pulled down deliberately got rid of for the sake of widening a road. Catanzaro is the one progressive town of Calabria, and has learnt too thoroughly the spirit of the time to suffer a blocking of its highway by middle-age obstruction.
Catanzaro was founded in the tenth century, at the same time that Taranto was rebuilt after the Saracen destruction; an epoch of revival for Southern Italy under the vigorous Byzantine rule of Nicephorous Phocas .... I made the circuit of the little town, and found that it everywhere overlooks a steep, often a sheer, descent, save at one point, where an isthmus unites it to the mountans that rise behind. The views are magnificent,whether one looks down the valley to the leafY shore, or in an opposite direction, up to the grand heights which, at this narrowest point of Calabria, separate the Ionian from the T yrrhene Sea. .., the ravines are deep and narrow, craggy, wild, bare. Each, when the snows are melting, becomes the bed of furious torrent; the watercourses uniting below to form the river of the valley. Where the abruptness of the descent does not render it impossible, olives have been planted on the mountain sides; the cactus clings everywhere, making picturesque many a wall and hovel, luxuriating on the hard, dry soil; fig trees and vines occupy more favoured spots, and the gardens of the better houses are often graced by a noble palm. " ( 10 )
Source: George Gissing was a British writer, most well known as one of the earliest realistic writers of nineteenth-century British fiction. He made two memorable trips to the Mediterranean: first to Rome and Athens in 1886, and eleven years later to Calabria which resulted in the book By The Ionian Sea: Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy first published in 1901.
