This same debasement of style in the south is witness, however, to the aggrandizement of Spain under Charles’s successors. The Renascence was spontaneous in Florence and natural in Rome, but in south it was imposed by force. Venice, Lombardy, Tuscany, and Rome never submitted so long to entirely foreign domination as Naples and Sicily did, and have therefore retained something distinctly individual in their art. It is unjust to say that the south submitted because it was weaker, morally and physically, than the north; the south was better worth winning and holding, and greater armies came against it, led by greater men, from Augustus to Roger the Great Count, and from Henry the Sixth to Gonzalvo de Cordova. While the north was divided into many small states, the south was held together in a single kingdom by the strong hands of Spanish kings, and the vastness of the Spanish domination made revolt seem impossible. Even when the south was separated from Spain, the Spanish Bourbons were its kings, and the people still felt that in some way they belonged to the greater kingdom of the West, while their rulers ruled them in the same old way, and while the court still derived its elaborate manners, its corrupt customs, and its execrable taste from the mouldering remnants of what Charles the Fifth had made.
It is all changed now, and the new influence is almost wholly commercial; but in Sicily the seed of a civilization has remained which may not be blasted by progress. There are men who are filled with a tender and discerning love for the beautiful that lies so near the surface, and their counsels are often followed; the frightful incrustations of Barocco ornament are being carefully removed from the Martorana, the noble Norman altar rail and fragments of mosaic have been unearthed from the cellars where they lay for centuries and have been carefully restored, and the original church once more appears in its true beauty. In the Palazzo dei Tribunali, whence Blanche of Navarre escaped from Cabrera on that winter’s night long ago, windows of matchless grace have been found and once more opened, the light of day again falls through long-hidden traceries of stone, and the grand carved ceilings, rich with all the heraldry of knightly times, have been again uncovered. No modern hand has rudely changed the outline of the Zisa palace, and the worst of the Spanish ornaments have been effaced in the great hall of the bath, where the water still fills the little tanks in the marble floor. Everywhere throughout Sicily the artistic feeling is conservative and good, while on the mainland things go from bad to worse; and it is only here and there, as at Ravello, the lovely Moorish castle above Amalfi, that an alien hand had arrested decay and warded off improvement. In the later development of things, the mainland has not yet lost its Spanish character; but Sicily’s native strength is beginning to show itself again, and if there is a resurrection in store for Italian architecture and Italian art, I venture to say that it will begin in Palermo or some Sicilian city, and not in Florence, which has become a manufactory of pretty facsimiles, nor in Rome, where art is given over to foreigners and architecture to contractors; and if any such renewal of life is to come, I think it will proceed from Saracen or Norman beginnings, and not from anything left by Charles the Fifth and the Spanish kings.
Conclusion: The Mafia
THE WORLD AT large knows little of modern Sicily, but that little generally includes a word of recent origin which is closely associated with the island in the public mind, but to which no meaning is attached that is even approximately true. The word is ‘Mafia.’ There is another which belongs to Naples, ‘Camorra,’ and which is better understood because it is more easily explained, and because the thing it means is more direct in its results. Both words are of doubtful origin. Camorra means an association of persons, having for its object an illicit control of any lawful or unlawful trade, obtained by forcibly excluding other people from taking part in it. In the broad sense it means the vast organization of thieves, high and low, by which daily life in Naples is controlled, by which the city is swayed in political matters, and with the existence of which the Italian government is obliged to reckon. The social effects of the Camorra do not extend much beyond the limits of the city; politically, the whole province is affected by it. In private life, it means that all who have acted in such a way as to be considered members of the Camorra are quite safe from depredation, so that if anything is stolen from them by mistake it is at once returned; it means also that whoever is willing to help the Camorra in its ends will be helped by it. It has no regular organization, no place of meeting, no elected officers; it is everywhere and it is nowhere; its members recognize each other by their conduct rather than by signs or words, and the commands of its chiefs are given verbally and transmitted in like manner. It might be described as a society for preserving a monopoly in stealing and illicit trades, were it not that many apparently respectable officials, men of business, and tradespeople protect it, or are under its protection. So far as it can be said to be organized at all, it manages itself by a sort of natural hierarchy and affiliation; the officers of each grade are self-created, and depend on force of character for the power they exercise. It might be called a system of bullying, in which every ringleader who can impose himself upon his companions is in turn forcibly controlled by one of higher standing than himself, who again is subject to others, and so on, from the street boy who gets a living by selling the stumps of cigars, to the high official and perhaps to the member of Parliament. The real end and object of the Camorra is, I think, always profit, gained by any means, good or bad. It constrains all pickpockets, thieves, and burglars in the city to render an account of their robberies of their superiors, on pain of being at once handed over to justice; and there is no city in the world in which it is so easy to recover stolen goods, provided that application be made in the right quarter. A part of its regular practice consists of robbing all foreigners, both directly, when possible, and in indirectly by extortion.
The Mafia differs from the Camorra in almost every respect, and whereas the latter is based on criminal practices, the former had its foundation in lawless principles. In attempting to give some account of the power which dominates a great part of Sicily at the present time, I shall follow the interesting work of Signor Antonio Cutrera, chief of police in Palermo, published in the present year 1900, and which may be taken as a thoroughly truthful account of the present state of things by one who has spent years in a hand-to‑hand fight with the evil.
Setting aside the possible ancient origin of the Mafia, its present development seems due to the great corruption which existed under the Bourbons, and especially in the police of that time, the consequence of which was a general tendency on the part of Sicilians to do justice for themselves. One of the principal functions of the Mafia is, indeed, to decide differences and dispense justice without appealing or submitting to the decision of a tribunal; and this is clearly the result a condition of things in which such an appeal was either useless or too expensive for persons of ordinary means.
Another principal element is the Sicilian character itself, which is bold, but extremely reticent, and is deeply imbued with a peculiar sense of honour for which the Sicilian language has a term of its own in the word ‘Omertà.’ According to this code, a man who appeals to the law against his fellow-man is not only a fool but a coward, and he who cannot take care of himself without the protection of the police is both. Evidently a profound contempt for the law is at the root of this principle, and the law is of course represented in the eyes of the people by the police and the tribunals. It is, therefore, logical that every Sicilian should do his utmost to hamper and impede the actions of both, and it is reckoned as cowardly to betray an offender to justice, even though the offence be against oneself, as it would be not to avenge an injury by violence. It is regarded as dastardly and contemptible in a wounded man to betray the name of his assailant, because if he recovers he must naturally expect to take vengeance himself. A rhymed Sicilian proverb sums up this principle, the supposed speaker being one who has been stabbed. ‘If I live, I will kill thee,’ it says; ‘if I die, I forgive thee.’
The obligation to conceal t
he name of the assassin or other offender extends to all those who chance to be witnesses of the crime, and it is even considered to be their duty to hide the criminal from the police if he is pursued. The code requires an innocent man to go to penal servitude for another rather than betray the culprit, and Signor Cutrera, who should know, if any one does, states that cases are not rare in which Sicilians, though innocent, have undergone long terms of imprisonment and have even died in prison, rather than give information to the police. The Mafia would brand with ‘infamy’ a man who should do otherwise, and this principle makes it almost impossible to bring into court witnesses for the conviction of a Mafiuso. With regard to the injured person, the obligation of silence is the same, although the possibility of vengeance may be infinitely removed. As has been said, the derivation of the word Mafia is unknown. The word itself, in the Sicilian dialect, means the ideally perfect, and a beautiful girl, for instance, would be called ‘Mafiusa,’ simply on account of her looks. The word is even applied by hawkers to their wares. It was first used in its present sense by the author of a famous play, ‘I Mafiusi di la Vicaria,’ which was produced in 1863 and ran many nights, and which has been translated from Sicilian into Italian and has been given all over Italy. From that time the west was adopted into the Italian language to designate an uncertain combination of brigandage, ‘Camorra,’ and general criminality. It is not the first time that a book or a play has given a name to something which had none, and which is ill defined by it. In Sicily the word now means a condition produced by two factors only, a long reign of violence on the one hand, and that mistaken sense of honour on the other, which has been already explained.
We next come to the consideration of the results produced by this state of things, and these of course vary according to the class to which the delinquents belong, from the lowest upwards. Signor Cutrera correctly describes the appearance of a low Mafiuso of Palermo. He wears his hat upon the left side, his hair smoothed with plentiful pomatum and one lock brushed down upon his forehead, he walks with a swinging motion of the hips, a cigar in his mouth, a heavy knotted stick in his hand, and he is frequently armed with a long knife or a revolver. He stares disdainfully at every man he meets with the air of challenging each comer to speak to him if he dare. To any one who knows Palermo, this type of the lower class is familiar. He is the common ‘Ricottaro,’ a word which I will not translate, but which broadly indicates that the young man derives his means of support from some unfortunate woman who is in his power. It is a deplorable fact that the same mode of existence is followed by young men of the middle classes, whose plentiful leisure hours are spent in play, and who have constituted themselves the official ‘claque’ of the theatres, imposing themselves upon the managers as a compact body. Moreover, during elections, they can be of the utmost assistance to candidates, owing to their perfect solidarity. With the most atrocious vices, they possess the hereditary courage of the Sicilian, and will face steel or bullets with the coolness of trained soldiers; and though they will insult and even beat their women when in the humour, they will draw the knife for the least disparaging word spoken against what they regard as their property. The writer I am following observes that a considerable number of these young men end in the dissecting room or in prison, but that others mend their ways when they are thirty years of age and turn into a higher species of their kind, which may be called the real Mafiusi.
The Mafia divides itself everywhere and naturally into two parts, the one existing in Palermo and the large cities, and the other without the walls and through the open country.
The full-blown Mafiuso in the city differs from the common Ricottaro in that he works secretly and by means of moral pressure, whereas the Ricottaro boldly kills his enemy or is killed by him, without the least attempt at concealment. Statistics show that in the city of Palermo, from 1893 to 1899, both inclusive, there have been eighteen murders, twenty-eight attempts at murder, and eighty-nine stabbings, all the work of the Ricottari.
A man’s position in the proper Mafia is the result of his personal influence, which derives in the first place from his reputation as a man of so‑called honour, and which is afterwards increased to any extent by force of circumstances, until he becomes a ‘Capo-mafia,’ and one of the acknowledged chiefs. His prestige is then such that his fellow-citizens appeal to him to settle their differences, both in matters of business and interest and in questions of ‘honour’; his house becomes the resort of all those who have difficulties to decide or who need the help of the ‘friends,’ as the Mafiusi commonly call each other. Nor are the Mafiusi the only persons who invoke the help of the Capo-mafia; strangers and even foreigners appeal to him, and as his prestige is increased in proportion to the gratitude he earns, he will take the greatest possible trouble to oblige any one who come to him for advice or assistance; and while the Mafia, as a whole, blocks the way for the law at every step, it makes itself indispensable to those who need redress and despair of getting it by legal process. We cannot call the means used by the Mafia lawful nor moral, but the scrupulous exactness with which a Capo-mafia keeps his word, and the general fairness with which he decides the cases that come before him, though he have not the smallest right to decide them, inspires great confidence in his clients and creates the sort of moral despotism on which the Mafia depends for its existence. Furthermore, the Capo-mafia may be a lawyer, and a member of the municipal or even the provincial council, or a cabinet minister, rising to the moral control of the whole society simply by his prestige and predominant will, but never by any sort of election or machinery, since the Mafia has none. Long before that he has become a rich man, because it would be practically impossible to make a contract for any public work, or to carry it out, without his intervention. Thus the vast system of patronage narrows naturally to a few chief patrons, who are of course intimately associated and who sometimes obey one head. The Mafia disposes of men of all conditions and all professions, and they are bound to it by no promises of secrecy nor oaths of obedience, but by interest and necessity on the one hand, and the strong Sicilian sense of ‘honour’ on the other; they are protected by it, for it can annihilate its isolated enemies, and even in criminal cases it is almost impossible to convict a Mafiuso, in the total absence of witnesses against him, so that a wise judge will generally adjourn such a case until he can find some excuse for sending it to be tried in a court on the mainland.
The Mafia acknowledges no allegiance to any political party, but when it nominates a candidate his election is generally a foregone conclusion, and the successful contestant is greeted by a popular ovation. It is hard to see how a constitutional government could successfully oppose such a system. Thoughtful persons will see what Signor Cutrera has not seen, namely, that it is a complete and highly efficient form of self-government, which exists, and will continue to exist, in defiance of the constitutional monarchy under which it is supposed to live. An ancient tyrant would have destroyed it by the brutal process of massacring half the population and transplanting the rest to the mainland, but no civilized method of producing the same result seems to have occurred to statesmen. The Bourbons employed the Mafia to keep order, the present government tolerates it because it cannot be crushed; when the Mafia joined Garibaldi, the Bourbons fell, and it remains to be seen what will happen in the south when the Mafia turns against the monarchy it has called in. It is to be hoped that such a catastrophe is far removed from present possibility, and it is at least a somewhat reassuring fact that the Mafia is the very reverse of anarchic, or even socialistic; it is, indeed, one of the most highly conservative systems in the world.
Its tyranny is more outwardly visible in the country, and particularly in the rich lands that surround Palermo, than in Palermo itself, or in the other cities most infected by it. One reason of this is the great development in the cultivation of oranges and lemons during this century. The crops are relatively very valuable, and are especially tempting to thieves because immediately marketable and easily carried off; the
lands are cut up into innumerable small holdings, and, without patrolling every orange grove with soldiers, which is impossible, the authorities could not possibly prevent the depredations of the fruit-stealers. The Mafia affords all who appeal to it the most thorough protection, and its despotism over the orange-growing regions is absolute; for, in return for such great advantages, landholders, whether owners or tenants, are only too glad to serve it at need and to abstain from all recourse to law.
In the first place, every landholder is obliged to maintain a ‘guardiano’ or watchman, in addition to the men he employs upon his land. There are, therefore, several thousands of these watchmen in the orange groves of the Golden Shell alone, and they are without exception Mafiusi, since they have the monopoly of their business and can altogether prevent the employment of strangers in their occupation. The landholder who attempts to oppose the monopoly will lose his whole crop in a night, and, if he persists, his life is not worth a year’s purchase. Among the watchmen and their employers, who are often bound to them by the strongest ties of friendship as well as of interest, there are always some whose influence controls the rest, men who have killed their man in a question of ‘honour’ and who have shown themselves on many occasions to be thorough Mafiusi. They therefore become the Capi-mafia of the district, and they are always in communication with the Capi-mafia of the city, and thereby affiliated to the great system of patronage. All differences which the Capo-mafia in the country is not competent to decide are thus referred to the patron in the city, from whose decision there is no appeal. Any one, whether a Mafiuso or not, who refuses to obey that verdict, is killed without mercy and generally without delay, unless he can escape from the country in time. The shot is fired from behind a wall, or in a shady grove at dusk and in the total absence of witnesses the most scrupulous inquiry very rarely even leads to an arrest, and never to a conviction. It is not a fight, but an execution, approved by all the thousands of landholders and their watchmen, who manage their affairs and govern themselves in this way. It may be that the Capo-mafia’s decision was perfectly fair; in any case the man knew what he risked in disobeying it, and his friends are not surprised at his death, nor do they seek to avenge it.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 1453