“Patihi, Patahé!” The Camuni of Brescia in Monongahela City: Part I

Old steamers on the Monongahela River

Borrowed from the archives of 'Poche Parole' (March 2009), the newsletter of the Italian Cultural Society of Washington D.C.

“Patihi, Patahé!” The Camuni of Brescia in Monongahela City

Summary of a talk by ICS member Terry Necciai at the American Italian Cultural Institute of Pittsburgh, (AMICO) Feb 15, 2009

The first of two articles

“The Daily Republican, 18 November 1892 — MONONGAHELA CITY, PA — The Italians living here joined in the celebration of the town’s centennial by raising a large Italian flag. The celebrating … being over, the Italians refused to take their flag down, and trouble was brewing over the incident. It is not known what would have been the consequences had not Mayor Huston compelled the colony to put the American flag on top of the Italian banner.” (Quoted from an earlier piece in the Pittsburgh Times)

By the 1860s, engineers around the world had learned, through “coking,” how to purify coal enough to replace charcoal in the iron smelting process. In places like Pittsburgh, iron masters built large smelting furnaces in the city, speeding up manufacturing operations, making iron less costly, and replacing primitive furnaces that had operated for years in the mountains. In some mountainous areas of Italy where there was no coal and where charcoal-fired iron had been made for centuries, the transition away from charcoal triggered the demise of the local economy.

As jobs became scarce in the province of Brescia, hundreds of families immigrated to the United States. Some of the first immigrants found work in the small, aging, riverfront mines around Monongahela City, a small town an hour south of Pittsburgh, by the mid-1880s. The first immigrants may have been Bersaglieri or Alpini veterans of the Risorgimento. According to a theory put forward by Don Franco Bontempi, the current parish priest in the Brescian town of Ono San Pietro, they may have been inspired by the fact that President Lincoln had offered Garibaldi a position in the Union Army, in 1861, at a point when the fires of the Risorgimento appeared to have died down. Brescians continued to come to Monongahela until the 1920s because it was one of few places in the world where their dialect (Camuno-Brescian) could be understood. They also found their way to this one town, following friends and relatives. Even today, in certain communities in the Brescian mountains, the name “Monongahela” is well-known, perhaps because many families have kept and handed-down letters from loved ones with the name in the return address (Some Brescians refer to the Pennsylvania locality as “Mononga-elapà,” not knowing that the last two letters in the address stand for the name of the state). Most of the Brescians who came to Monongahela City were from the Val Camonica and the smaller tributary valleys to the east and west of it, an area that comprises the northern two-thirds of the province of Brescia. A 60-mile-long industrial valley in the Alps, the Val Camonica has about a hundred towns and villages clustered around iron furnaces, water-powered forges, wine presses, and other traditional manufacturing facilities. In addition to iron and other metals, as well as table wine, the valley is also known for its cheese and sausages.

Italians may have been among the earliest settlers of Western Pennsylvania. At least two travel writers, as they passed through the area in 1803 and 1806, mentioned an Italian component in local culture as if Italian immigrants were already living in Pittsburgh by then, but research has not been successful in identifying specific familes. A group Passionist Fathers came to Pittsburgh in 1845 to serve the local Catholic community, which, in the middle decades of the nineteenth century, consisted almost exclusively of Irish and German immigrants. Many immigrants from iron manufacturing areas in Germany had come by the 1840s to work in the Pittsburgh iron industry. However, it was not until after the onset of the Panic of 1873 that groups of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe began to show up in large numbers as a new pool of workers. Unstable conditions, particularly in the smaller coal mines between Monongahela City and Pittsburgh, made seasonal jobs available for incoming workers. One well-documented episode in immigration history was a shoot-out that occurred in 1874, at a mine in the village of Buena Vista about 12 miles northeast of Monongahela City and 22 miles south of Pittsburgh, between a group of Italian families who had been hired as workers to break a small-scale strike and the local people whose jobs they were hired to take. Based on their names, this group of Italians appears to have been from near the Swiss border.

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Iron Crown to Ironwood II

As stated in the previous article (Iron Crown to Ironwood), the town of Hurley is on the west side of the Montreal River (Wisconsin), and bigger town of Ironwood is on the east side of the Montreal River (Northern Michigan). About 20% of Hurley's residents are "Italian," largely Lombardian. Although small, Hurley has had quite a reputation as a very rough town at the height of it's iron mining and lumberjack past.

[Above, left: A portion of the stripper joints along Hurley's main drag. The town is a pale shadow of the days in the 1920s and 1930s when Hurley was one of the most raucous places in the country.]

The following is an article from Hunts-Upguide.com:

Region: Ironwood & the Gogebic Range

Hurley Area

Today Hurley, Wisconsin, is a fairly placid place with a tourism-based economy. But it has nearly 30 bars, a rather unusual number for a town of 2,000. That's the only tip-off to Hurley's notorious past, unequaled in all the north woods. "Hurley, Hayward, and Hell," the saying went- though some people wonder if Cumberland shouldn't have been added to the list of lawless lumber towns. Three Hurley taverns at the bottom of Silver Street still have strippers.

Snowmobilers love Hurley because it's so snowy, so friendly, and so handy. Snowgoer magazine consistently rates it "best nightlife in the Midwest." The entire downtown is virtually on trail because the snowmobile trail is on the old railroad right of way. The railroad made Hurley boom in 1885 by connecting it with Ashland, Wisconsin, and its ore docks. The tracks ran right behind the north side of Silver Street.

"Throughout the Middle West, wherever lumberjacks and miners congregated, Hurley was known as the hell-hole of the range," stated Michigan: A Guide to the Wolverine State, the 1941 W.P.A. guide. "Even Seney, at its worst and liveliest, could not compete with the sin, suffering, and saloons that gave Hurley a reputation unrivaled from Detroit to Duluth."

From the beginning, Hurley was the wild, wide-open frontier town, in contrast to Ironwood just across the river, where mining companies based in Michigan reflected the more sober values of the eastern and Marquette interests that developed the Gogebic Range. The fledgling community of Hurley fought to preserve its autonomy by separating itself from more powerful and staid Ashland County, which it did in 1893. Hurley's elaborate courthouse with its impressive tower had already been built, in a prearranged deal.

Hurley's rough, crude past was the subject of Come and Get It (1934), a popular novel by Edna Ferber, the author of Show Boat, Giant, and Stage Door. She set it during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Ferber stayed in town at the celebrated Burton House hotel, then in decline, and talked to many local people. She based the novel on fictionalized composite versions of an expansive lumber baron (said to reflect aspects of Escanaba lumber titan Bill Bonifas) and the celebrated Lotte Moore. Moore was "a well loved entertainer and lady of the evening," in the words of local historian Gene Cisewski. "In her day, the profession of high-class escort was not illegal. And when a woman carried herself with the proper comportment and discretion, the profession wasn't even frowned upon too seriously." Lotte was murdered in 1890, perhaps because she had witnessed a bank robbery.

In the sanitized but still enjoyable 1936 film version of Come and Get It, Lotta (played by Frances Farmer, now a cult figure, in her most noted role) reforms, marries, and has a daughter who marries the son of the lumberman who deserted her.

Ferber described the fictionalized Hurley as "a sordid enough town. . . , with all the vices and crudeness of the mining camps of an earlier day, but with few of their romantic qualities. Lumber and iron were hard masters to serve. A cold, hard country of timber and ore. . . . A rich and wildly beautiful country, already seared and ravaged. . . . Encircling the town were the hills and ridges that had once been green velvety slopes, tree shaded. Now the rigs and shafts of the iron mines stalked upon them with never a tree or blade of grass to be seen." Local people say that Come and Get It has little to do with the truth, but it's a good read and a memorable movie, often available through inter-library loan. Ferber, who was Jewish, did her research in Hurley but took offense to perceived local anti-Semitism, left town, and finished the novel at Bill Bonifas's cottage on Lake Gogebic.

A colorful true story from more recent times concerns a judge who ran a strip joint in which the stripper used a boa constrictor in her act. One fateful time she battered a heckling customer with it. Not long after that, the fire department got a call about a fire there, but arrived to find no smoke. Four or so hours later the place burned.

Hurley ignored all limitations on the sale of alcohol, up to and including Prohibition, passed in 1919. Stories of protracted conflicts between federal agents and local people are told during the Living History tour of Hurley taverns held during the Iron County Heritage Festival in late July and early August. For times, call (715) 561-5310 or look in at www.ironcountywi.com

The lower block of Silver Street dates from the Prohibition years, when a mining company decided to subdivide it and sell it off. Nearly 200 saloons, disguised as soda shoppes, lined downtown's streets. When Chicago gangsters established resorts and gambling rackets in northern Wisconsin mining and lumber towns, Hurley was a favorite place to relax and recreate. Al Capone never could figure out how to make inroads into Hurley's well-established business in illegal booze. He is said to have been a regular visitor; his brother Ralph ran several businesses in nearby Mercer and died in a Hurley nursing home.

Strip clubs are less artistically erotic and more crudely sexual than 50 years ago, and a small place like Hurley can't pay big-time performers. Compared to metro areas, local strip clubs are said to be tame. And patrons can't break the rules about physical contact, or the police will be called.

These Hurley bars stand out in terms of general interest:

• FREDDIE'S OLD-TIME SALOON and HALL OF FAME is full of sports memorabilia. The thick, bulletproof walls from Prohibition days aren't evident to visitors. 411 Silver St. (715) 561-5020.

• THE IRON NUGGET CASUAL FOOD & DRINK has a dining area that's a virtual museum of local iron mining. 404 Silver St. (715) 561-9800.

• MAHOGANY RIDGE feels like it's an original tavern from the 1890s, but it really dates from the early 1920s. Visually it's far and away the most striking of Hurley's taverns. The heavy, ornate back bar is said to have been carved by Scandinavians from the Keweenaw Peninsula. Said to get rowdy as the evening goes on, but it's a placid place in the daytime. (It opens at 9 a.m.) 29 Silver St. (715) 561-4414.

• Daytime pedestrians and sightseers may find more of interest at the HURLEY COFFEE COMPANY, a cheerful, light-filled coffeehouse and internet cafe with ice cream cones, soup and sandwiches, coffees and mugs, teas and teapots, cards and gifts. 122 Silver St. at Second/U.S. 1. (715)561-5500. Open 7 days from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Handicap accessible.

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Actually, there are quite a few articles online about the Ironwood area, which, although small in population, is part of our history in America. It's also notable that the area is one of the chief centers of Finnish ancestry in America. Some of the names of the local towns in the Montreal River area strike me as interesting, like Rhinelander, Germania, or Tomahawk. Of course there are also all the regional names with "iron." I was thinking also of another remote connection, as our culture was a chief center of the "Iron Age," called the "Villanovan culture," which was based in Tuscany, Lombardy, and a little bit in the Veneto. The book 'Creed of Iron' is about Wotanism, and the old ways of our ancestors in that era. The Langobards called Wotan... "Godan," and that's a whole new subject. As you can see, there are so many connections here, literal, and spiritual. When you dive into a simple subject like this, it's amazing just how far you can go.

A few YouTube videos about the region:

Old family photographs in Ironwood

The Hiawatha of Ironwood

The Beauty of Lake Superior

Kayaking Montreal River canyon

Amazing Snowboarding at Big Powderhorn Mountain

Bad River Casino National Snocross Race - Ironwood, MI - Pt. 1

Finnish American Lives

The Finnish American Lives video is part of a documentary from 1982, which can be found here. Although we hear it probably too often about the Midwest, the Ironwood area is a very pure part of America. It did have a very rough reputation at one time however. Maybe a little bit like Deadwood, South Dakota.


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8-23-09 Addition: I could almost make a third part to this series. I just wanted to note a few items and thoughts. When looking at a map of the region, I saw Green Bay, which is not all that far away. I have never been there, but it appears to me that it possesses the rugged charm of a small town, and a way of life probably not even much different than in the Ironwood area. There's so much history there, and I would like to look into further connections, past and present, in relation to what we're looking at here. There are just over 100,000 people in Green Bay, Wisconsin. It's probably best known for it's NFL team, the Green Bay Packers, named after the meat packing industry there. There is also a timeless element to the team, as one can easily vision the old Packer teams playing in the frost of winter, and images of Vince Lombardi on the sidelines, and all the other famous Packer players of the 60s. Vince Lombardi wasn't Lombardian, but was Neapolitan. On top of winning games, Lombardi was known for all those thought-provoking and challenging ideas about "life and winning."

Also noteworthy is the historical relationship between mining in the Montreal River area of Northern Michigan and Wisconsin, and the automotive industry in Detroit or Pontiac, Michigan. The mined metallic product is loaded onto ships and shipped east across Lake Superior and then south along Lake Huron to the various shipping ports. To show that these ocean-like lakes are not anything to be taken lightly, in 1975, one of these cargo freighters actually sank during a storm upon Lake Superior. It was called the SS Edmund Fitzgerald. It more than just sank, it was wrecked and the entire crew was lost.

Iron Crown to Ironwood

Lombardia, historically the land of the Iron Crown of the Langobards (and later Napoleon), and also known for iron mining in the Valle Camonica. For centuries the valley produced both the raw materials for armaments of war and their design. They did this for whichever government ruled over them, not the least of which was the thousand-year Venetian Empire.

Northern Michigan, also known for iron mining. Lots of it. Although the mining has waned, the place names remain. Iron Mountain, Ironwood, Ironwood Township, Iron River, Iron Belt, Iron Exchange Bank, Ironwood Ridge, and bordering Iron County, Wisconsin, just to give a few examples.

Lost in the history of this region is the fact that it attracted a somewhat sizable number of immigrants from Lombardia. Sizable at least in the percentage of the overall population in this rural region. I had always heard about "Northern Michigan," but the name didn't mean anything to me until I looked closely at a map, and could see that it was almost like a state onto itself, separated from the rest of Michigan by the great lakes. It's a rural area, much of it flatlands, heavily forested, and with a distinct pure northern feel to it. I think when people say the "north woods," they're probably talking about Northern Michigan. I recall looking at an old National Geographic magazine once, and seeing at least a part of this area which was extremely heavily wooded, with the huge tree trunks, mixed with rocky and lush mossy ground cover, and which reminded me of some parts of the wooded Sierra Nevada areas more than the Minnesota or Wisconsin-style wooded flatlands.

I can recall one time, on television, two Italian-Americans, both from one of the major northeast urban areas, referring to "Italians in Northern Michigan," jokingly as being "kind've different." As they laughed, this went right over my head at the time, and I thought that it merely meant that they were "rural people," as opposed to "city people." I suspect that they actually meant that they had visited the area, and found that those "Italians" struck them as being very different. More than mere "city versus country" would suggest. Different faces, different mannerisms. In fact, a different ethnic group.

One center of Lombardian settlement, in and around a century ago, was in Ironwood, Michigan. Ironwood was a mining town founded in 1889. Its population today is only 6,293 (down from 10,000 in 1900), but it is the chief city in that particular part of Northern Michigan. I'm not going to do a profile on this city, as it would get me too much off track, but do take a look at the link, and of nearby "suburbs" like Hurley, Wisconsin, which is directly across the Montreal River from Ironwood in Iron County. The main business strips of these cities remind me of Calistoga, California, or even Petaluma, as far as architecture and old simple beauty. Of course, with a northern flavor to them.

"Ironwood" is also a forest in Norse mythology, from the Poetic Edda, and likely named this due to the large Scandinavian-American population. This also is a remote connection with Lombardia. Another connection is the St. Ambrose Catholic Church in Ironwood, founded in the 1890s, and of the distinctly Lombardian "Ambrosian Rite" of Catholicism, and which is also referred to as the "Milanese Rite."

A excerpt from the Ironwood Wikipedia page under History: "Iron ore was found in the area in the 1870s but it wasn't until the mid 1880s when the arrival of the railroad to the area opened it for more extensive exploration of the vast iron ore deposits. Soon several mines were discovered and opened such as the Norrie mine, Aurora mine, Ashland mine, Newport mine, and Pabst mine. The opening of the mines and the lumber works in the area led to a rapid influx of immigrants both from other parts of the USA and directly from Europe (mainly Sweden, Germany, England, Italy, Poland, Finland)."

Another excerpt from this page under Demographics: "The ancestral makeup of the population were 24.7% Finnish, 17.0% German, 14.8% Italian, 12.6% Polish, 10.4% English and 9.5% Swedish." Anything here under the title of "Italian" is largely Lombardian or similar cultures. A region populated by Germanic or Germanic-influenced peoples, and in a landscape and climate which is very "northern."

The following is from an article entitled 'Ethnic Life in the South Shore Region', which is the region south of the massive Lake Superior. Take a peek at the above link, at the gallery. Like with so many subjects, I wish I could do this more justice, so to speak. There's so much history here. Those Great Lakes are accessable to the Atlantic Ocean, I think, as we can see photographs of ship traffic in them. While poking around Wikipedia in preparation of this article, I looked at the page for Duluth, Minnesota, which is right on the eastern shore of Lake Superior, and in the images there was one beautiful old image of one of those old passenger ships, like the Titanic, coming into the Duluth harbor at twilight. If you didn't know where it was, you would swear it was any ocean port. The immigrants may have even made their way to Northern Michigan mining communities, like Ironwood, by ship.

"Ethnic Life in the South Shore Region

By Greta Swenson

The term “ethnic identity” is used today to describe a feeling of shared heritage and cultural expression found among groups who have migrated and resettled in a “New Land.” In northwestern Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Croatian, Slovakian, Czech, Polish, Russian, Italian, Cornish, Irish, German, Lithuanian, and other peoples came to the area to reestablish their families, communities, and churches just before and after the turn of the century. Settlement days along the South Shore of Lake Superior were like a bustling League of Nations, freshly organized and economically booming.

The settlers brought with them and developed a rich ethnic history in the region. But the rich, diverse cultural life brought by the early settlers did not end with that history. Those cultures interacted, intermarried, and adapted to the economic and climatic necessities of the northern winters. They transmitted their traditions to the succeeding generations. Today in the South Shore region, ethnic expression is a part of everyday life. We can see indications of that life on the streets, in the grocery stores, and in other public forums. Private means of expressing who we are, are also part of ethnic life in the South Shore region. This life is expressed in a variety of ways. In order to explore the ethnic life of the region, we will first take a look at the settlement days.

Settlement

European presence along the South Shore of Lake Superior began with the voyageurs and missionaries as early as 1659. Settlement of the land and towns in this region, however, did not occur until a period from 1840 to 1920, during the second large wave of immigration to the United States. People migrated to the South Shore region, as to other parts of the country, because of the need for labor and raw materials to support the rapid industrial expansion taking place in the United States. They left their old homes because of a lack of land, work, or idealogic freedom in many of the European countries.

These two urges opened wide the gates of passage from Scandinavia and Eastern and Southern Europe to “New Worlds.” The first large group of new immigrants to come to the region were the Cornish. They were recruited to work in the mines of the Copper Country in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. When those mines opened in the 1850s and ‘60s, experienced Finnish copper miners working in Norway were also recruited and imported by the mining companies. Following company recruitment, immigration to the mines increased rapidly. Building of the railroad for shipment of the ore was one reason for the increased migration.

In addition, immigrants wrote “American letters” to family and friends in the Old Country and other parts of North America, telling them work was available and providing an address to which to come. The Cornish and Finns ere followed by Scandinavians, Italians, Slavic groups from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Germans, and several other groups seeking work. Many of these immigrants to the region had already migrated to North America and were working elsewhere. Twenty years later, the Gogebic Iron Range mines opened up, beginning full production when the railroad was completed to the Ashland, Wisconsin docks in 1884.

At the same time, lumber companies were cutting northern Wisconsin’s an the Upper Peninsula’s white pine forests in order to supply building material to the mining operations and to the rest of the rapidly expanding young nation. In the 1890s, brownstone quarries opened along the South Shore. Work was abundant; the region was booming. Ashland, Wisconsin, in 1900, had a population of 13,000, its waterfront included approximately 11 ore docks, 13 to 18 sawmills, a pulp mill, and a blast furnace. By World War I, the timber had been “cutover” – nothing but stump acreage remained of the giant white pine forests.

Agricultural settlement in the area was then actively encouraged by several agencies, including lumber companies, the state governments, and private land investors. New groups of migrants came to the region to work the land. Advertisements, such as this one of the James Good Land Company in Ashland, Wisconsin, were published in ethnic language newspapers printed in the United States. This particular advertisement was published in the Czech language and widely circulated throughout the United States. Slovaks and Czech-speaking Bohemians who were working in the coal mines in Oklahoma, or slaughterhouses in Iowa, saw an opportunity to own their own land and headed north.

They settled the community of Moquah, Wisconsin, southwest of Ashland. Others did the same: advertisements were also circulated in Polish, Hungarians, Croatian, Finnish, and the Scandinavian languages. The boom continued. After strikes in the Minnesota and Michigan iron mines in 1907, 1913, and 1917, Finns, Croatians, and others left the mines and moved out to the stump acreage to settle the land of the South Shore region. This sign from one of Ashland, Wisconsin’s early banks reflects the rich ethnic diversity of those early boom years along the South Shore. It also reflects the major motivation for migration to the area: opportunity to economically better ones and one’s family’s condition.

“We can send money to the Old Country” the sign proclaims in Swedish, Finnish, Polish, Slovak, German, Hungarian, and Russian. Life in the booming frontier area was multicultural. The settlers brought with them their diverse languages, religions, foods, and customs. People bonded together for mutual support, mingling with their neighbors. Societies like this Italian group were formed or mutual benefit and to supply social interaction. Most groups soon established a church, organized according to language and culture. In 1907 in Calumet, Michigan, for instance, six Catholic churches were active: Polish, Italian, Slovenian, Croatian, French, and one general.

In Ashland, Wisconsin, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish, Swede-Finnish, and English Lutheran churches has also been organized. Several ethnic language newspapers were published in the region during those early years, providing the settlers a contact with others of their group throughout the world. In the public arena, the rich cultural diversity of the region’s settlement days contributed to entertainment. Members of the Swedish Glee Club celebrated Midsummer’s Day with a picnic, while Moquah residents formed a Slovak Dance group, and members of the Croatian Fraternal Union played tamburitza music.

At home, more private expressions of ethnic identity can be traced through the words of settlers. Oral histories, diaries, songbooks, and newspaper articles reveal active ethnic identities among the settlers. Evidence of home-centered expressions of cultural roots can also be found in museums – a krumkake iron from a Norwegian woman’s kitchen, or a collection of Swedish wood carvings from someone’s living room. Family celebrations, such as weddings and funerals, varied from group to group, but were also mixed, as people began to marry into different cultures.

Regional Mixture

Ethnic groups settled often in enclaves – a large Finnish population, for instance, in the township of Oulu, Wisconsin, or Italian families in “The Flats” between Ironwood, Michigan and Hurley, Wisconsin. Both at work and at play, however, people did rub elbows with their neighbors. Musicians in the various communities, for instance, traded tunes and instruments. Folklorist Jim Leary described the life of one musician as “How a Pole learned a German tune from a Norwegian accordionist while playing an Italian instrument at a Swede’s tavern.” Ethnic expression along the South Shore was a part of everyday life for the settlers. They practiced their own traditions, and learned new ones from their neighbors. This diverse mixture of ethnic traditions is visible in the region today.

Current Life-Public

Some very public indicators of the current ethnic life along the South Shore exist today. Signs such as that for Koski Korners outside of Marquette, Michigan, or the several public saunas in the city, indicate immediately to the causal observer that segments of a Finnish heritage are still active in the community. The churches remain as landmarks to the ethnic neighborhoods, and in some cases indicate the unique mixture of ethnic religion with regional economy, as does this copper-domed synagogue in the Upper Peninsula’s copper country. Some ethnic halls and societies are yet active, other, as one Swedish-Finn put it, are no longer necessary, since insurance companies have replaced them.

Musicians, older and younger, are still active in the region. Art Moilanen still plays Finnish polkas and schottisches in Mass City, Michigan every Saturday night. In the Bohemian and Slovak settlement of Moquah, Wisconsin, entertainment at an annual hunters’ ball is provided by a local band, the Polka-Teers. Members of this band are of Slovak, Croatian, and Polish descent. They play music from each of those cultures, as well as more modern pieces from artists like Johnny Cash, and a Finnish schottische now and then. Records stores carry current ethnic artists, and local jukeboxes may feature Croatian, Finnish, or Italian numbers.

If you walk into a grocery store in Ashland or Hurley, Wisocnsin; Ironwood, Hancock, or Marquette, Michigan, just before Christman, you will be greeted with a sign such as this in Ironwood’s Jack’s Food Store. Holidays are a special time for many ethnic groups, and no Swede, Norwegian, or Finn would be caught celebrating Christmas Eve without lutfisk. Other items in the grocery store are surprising to the casual observer only because they are not in specialty sections. Swedish headcheese, or sylta, is next to the bologna. In the Italian area of Ironwood-Hurley, shelves are lined with pasta. Bakeries feature such items as Scandinavian “toast,” or rusks, and Finnish breads.

Finnish restaurants feature Cornish pasties, a regional symbol of the settlement mixture. As one resident of the Upper Peninsula once commented about the pasty, “They were brought by the Cornish, made edible by the Finnish, but the best ones made around here now are made by an Italian.” Down the road, Billy Trolla, a second-generation Italian grocer, caters to the special needs of second-, third-, and fourth-generation Italian families. Community events nearly always involve some sort of ethnic expression in the South Shore region, whether Croatian cabbage rolls are served at a wedding, or Italian-American communities. The Swedish Lutheran Church in Ashland, Wisconsin each year celebrates St. Lucia Day before Christmas, and Finnish communities in the region stage annual Johannus, or Midsummer’s, celebrations.

Current Life-Private

While there are visible landmarks and customs which tell us about an active ethnic life along the South Shore, it is inside people’s homes – in their kitchens, attics, daily rituals – that the ethnicity of the region is most expressed. Private expressions in the daily lives of area residents have been passed along, sifted out, and chosen as favorites symbols of ethnic identity. No tradition is so strongly continued in the ethnic homes as are those of food. If we peek into the kitchen of Irene Lunda Novak, a Czech-speaking Moravian from the Moquah, Wisconsin community, we will likely find her baking special sweet breads and kolache to have on hand for coffee time. Irene learned to make kolache from her mother, as did her sister, Agnes.

They now make them differently from each other, but, as Agnes says, “They taste the same.” Rose Tody Kriskovich, who lives only a few miles from the Novaks, is of Croatian descent. What Rose pulls out of the freezer when visitors stop in at coffeee time is strudel made from a distinctive “stretch dough” her mother used. Here her niece, Marilyn McKay, learns to prepare the strudel the way Rose did – by helping. Rose Stella Longhini’s parents migrated to Ironwood, Michigan from the Abruzzi region of Italy. From her mother, Rose learned to prepare varieties of Italian pastries and “cookies,” items she prepares and stores in her freezer, so they are always “on hand.”

Agnes Raspotnik Oreskovich, of Slovenian descent, cuts a different pastry for the coffee plate: a rolled walnut bread called “potica.” Scandinavian-Americans in Hancock, Michigan may prepare rosettes, while Polish-Americans in Ashland, Wisconsin spend a great deal of time and effort making pierogi for special occasions. But, food isn’t the only private form of expressing one’s ethnic heritage. Once we set food inside Irene Novak’s kitchen, we will discover more non-public symbols of her identity in other parts of her home. In addition to special kitchen utensils used to prepare Czech sweet breads, Irene has safely kept away in a truck hand-embroidered headdresses sent to her by her cousins in Moravia when she was a girl.

In the home of Agnes and Joe Oreskovich will be found representative hand-crafted items from Yugoslavia. Mrs. Norman Burnside include in her decor symbols of her Norwegian ancestry, while Vern and Naima Sandstrom proudly display a symbol of their multiple identities: Swedish, Finnish, and American flags. Another symbol of their ethnic identities is hidden away in the basement: the ever-present Finnish sauna. Ethnic life in the region stems from the settlers’ rich, diverse cultural heritages, heritages which also have mingled together to produce distinctive regional expressions. Past and present, public and private, traditional and adapted, the diversity of those ethnic expressions adds a uniqueness to life in the South Shore region.

Credits

Produced by Special Student Programs
Northland College
Ashland, Wisconsin 54806

Script by Greta E. Swenson

Visuals by Sue Ellen Smith, James P. Leary and Greta E. Swenson

Funded with a grant from the Ethnic Heritage Studies Program
U.S. Department of Education, directed by Stuart Lang.

Narrated by Cynthia Soucheray-Luoma

Music by Ray Maki, Olavi Winturri, Bill Hendrickson, The Voyageurs, George Noisianen, Jerry Novak, St. Mary's Russian Orthodox Church, Gogebic Range Tamburitzans, Rose Swanson & Friends, Art Moilanen, Saron Lutheran Church, Tom Marincel, Bruno Synkula, and the Bethany Swedish Baptist String Band.

This program is a result of hospitality extended by the people and organizations of the South Shore region."

The Jews of Brescia: Iron and Star of David

Apparently this article is a part of a series about Hebrew/Jewish history. Like all articles, which are at least partially from either an specific "ethnic interest" or a particular cultural point of view (Anglo-Saxon, Jewish, Southern Italian, etc.), I hold a slight skepticism. This could be in the form of something being exaggerated, out of proportion, false paradigmed, or out of comparative logic.

This article seems on the level. I was particularly interested in the overview of the Brescia/Camonica region from this particular scholarly and thoughtful point of view. In other words, it's more thorough than an encyclopedia, and still short enough to be considered an overview introduction.

This material is copyrighted. However, the Hebrew History Federation is a non-profit organization, run by non-salaried volunteers, and certainly this blog is not for profit, so I assume that there will be no problems. Full credit for this work goes to the following:


'The Jews of Brescia: Iron and Star of David' ©

Samuel Kurinsky (author)

Hebrew History Federation Ltd.(www.hebrewhistory.info)
345 West 58th St., #9M
New York, NY 10019

E-mail: info@hebrewhistory.info

[Above Right: The first of a set of 34 massive tomes produced for the church in 1774, housed in the Querignano library of Brescia. They purport to be a complete compendium of Judaic religion, rites, customs, institutions, culture and literature. They contain thousands of documents from Judaic and other sources written in Hebrew, Aramaic, Latin, and Italian. The material housed in the Querignano library rarely has been looked into for the more than two centuries of their existence. Father Franco Bontempi, a Catholic priest, has delved into such hitherto overlooked archives to document the hidden history of the 2000-year Judaic contribution to the culture and industry of North-central Italy. Illustration by courtesy of the Querignano library]

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The Jews of Brescia:

Iron and Star of David


Fact Paper 34

© Samuel Kurinsky, all rights reserved


* The Jews of Brescia: Iron and Star

* "Don Franco's" Research in Valcamonica

* Etruscans and Semites in Valcamonica

* Fire and Water: Industry Elements

* The Querigniana Library

* The Kaufman Collection

* The Gonzaga Connection

* Printing and Papermaking

* The Martinengos and the Jews

* Bandiera Rosso; Bandiera Verde

* Notes


The Jews of Brescia: Iron and Star

Documentary evidence has revealed that at the turn of the Common Era a Jewish woman, Annia, a freed slave, was actively involved in the iron industry of northern Italy.

The evidence was presented by Father Franco Bontempi of the St. Francis Cultural Circle of Brescia, Italy, at an exhibition in New York co-sponsored by the Istituto Italiano di Cultura and Yeshiva University Museum. The exposition featured research done by Father Bontempi in the mountainous region northwest of the city of Brescia. The Jewish presence in that area, and the association of the Jews with the ancient iron, pottery, glass, printing, paper, textile, and stringed instrument industries, was discussed by Father Bontempi at the Museum, then at the Istituto, and a third lecture at New York University's Italian Cultural hall.

Father Franco Bontempi is a Catholic priest charged with a Brescian parish. He is an enthusiastic scholar who devoted many years to documenting the Jewish presence and activities in the north-central sector of Italy. Convinced that the Jews had an important and salutary impact upon Brescian culture and industry from pre-Roman times through the Renaissance, he assembled an array of archaeological, documentary, and historical evidence to support his thesis. He demonstrated that the important Jewish contribution to the technological development of the Brescian area was heretofore overlooked and underrated.

His sympathetic perspective on Judaism may be rooted in the fact that his mother (nee Modena), was of Jewish origin. In addition, the Bontempi family were, until the sixteenth century, Jewish merchants of importance.

The Alpine region above Brescia is the only place in Italy where iron (and copper) ore is found in sufficient quantities to be mined. The region was therefore of vital importance from pre-Roman into modern times, when other, more productive European resources caused a decline in the iron industry. The area still, however, boasts of a major metallurgical industry. Towns in the hills above the neighboring city of Bergamo are replete with foundries and factories producing a wide range of metal products from hinges to cannons. The mountains around Bergamo offer spectacular vistas, but heavy pollution and frenetic industrial activity discourage tourism.

[Left: A tombstone fragment of the early Roman period found in Brescia. The inscription refers to the patroness of the "Brixia" synagogue. Another such tombstone is inscribed to an "archisynagogue." Photo by the author, courtesy of the Santa Giulia Museum, Brescia.]

The mountains around Brescia, however, still retain a pristine beauty. Lake Iseo, nesting jewel-like among forested hills, was the site of an ancient Jewish cemetery. Three of the inscriptions found in the ruins of the cemetery provide definitive information about its existence.

Additional Jews arrived as slaves in the early Roman Imperial period and subsequently became a viable free community. It is one of many previously unknown and unheralded Judaic communities that practiced their technological expertise amid primitive surroundings. It shares with Aquileia the distinction of being another noteworthy community absent from the Encyclopedia Judaica and from current atlases of ancient Judaic communities.

One gravestone inscription bears the name Annia Juda Liberta, which translates to "Annia the Freed Jewess," that is, freed from slavery. The stone is in the form of a stele, and contains a still legible, detailed inscription which provides highly instructive information. Deference is given to Junone, the pagan god of water and iron venerated by the local tribes, in thanks for the ferric largesse provided. The dedication indicates that due consideration was being shown to the religion of the local tribesmen by thanking them through their god for the valuable ores being taken from their mountains.

The dedication indicates that the Roman Gods had not yet penetrated that region, and helps establish the date of the cemetery to as far back as 50 BCE.

The existence of a synagogue is evidenced by a second cemetery inscription, in which the name Celia Paterna Mater Sinagogae Bruxianorum appears, informing us that the woman Celia Paterna had been a sponsor of (or donor to) the synagogue of the region of Brescia.

The name of a third inscription verifies the existence of a synagogue at this early time. The title: of the deceased, archisinagogo, designates him as the head or deacon of the synagogue to which the cemetery pertained.

The early date of the inscriptions is reinforced by the fact that the Greek, rather than the Latin alphabet is employed in several inscriptions.

The existence of a substantial Judaic community is again made apparent by the exposure of many small mosaic floors in the cemetery's periphery. The floors include the motif of the nodo di Solomone, "Solomon's knot," as it is referred to in Italian sources, and as "Solomon's seal" in other references. This design identifies the residents of the houses as Jewish. Readers of the HHF Newsletters will recall the appearance of this symbol in a Jewish context in Aquileia, Monastero, Vercelli, Ostia, and Sicily.

One large rock in the area features a Nodo di Solomone in the graffiti incised upon its face.

The area in which cemetery and the mosaic floors were found was known throughout the ages as the Posto di Schiavi, or "The Place of the Slaves."

It is significant that the pass which leads from the area of Lake Iseo to that of the valley from whose mountain sides iron and copper were mined, is still labeled on current maps as the "Passo degli Ebrei," or "The Pass of the Jews."

Evidence of pottery manufacture by Jewish community members was also found. It will be recalled that the HHF was instrumental in proving that the Jews of Kfar Hananiah and Shikhin were expert industrial potters by funding the analyses of pottery shards from those Judahite communities. It would indeed be interesting to determine if the style and technology used in manufacturing the Brescia earthenware of the same period bears a relationship to that of Kfar Hananiah and Shikhin!

Is it mere coincidence that the name of the freed slave on the cemetery stele was Annia, a Greek transcription of the Hebrew Hananiah?

Thus the evidence gathered by Father Bontempi provides overwhelming proof that an active Judaic community with a synagogue and a cemetery existed around lake Iseo in the iron-mining pre-Alpine region of northern Italy at the turn of the Common Era.

Research on this ancient Judaic community was but a part of Father Bontempi's extensive research and writing about the Jewish presence in the province of Brescia and in the surrounding provinces. The existence of non-native mulberry trees evidence the introduction of sericulture by the Jews. Sericulture (the production of silk) was an exclusively Judaic art at the time.2

There is also evidence that the introduction of the production of stringed instruments in Cremona was yet another seminal Jewish contribution to the area. The first renowned producer of the violin in its modern form, Amati, is said to have been of Jewish origin! Father Bontempi states that there is also evidence that the inventor of the famed varnish that presumably gives the Cremona violins their rich tone was likewise a Jew.

The introduction of the printing industry into the area by a Jewish family fleeing oppression in Germany is another historically significant technological landmark of the region. The name of the family became Soncino, after the town south of Brescia where they established one of the earliest and most renowned printing establishments.

The title of the exhibitions curated by Father Bontempi is the same as that of his book, Iron and Star, a reference to the iron industry and the star of David. The subtitle, Jewish Brescia in the Renaissance Italy, refers to this continuing history.

Another important book by Father Bontempi, Bienno, History, Society, and Economy, elaborates his theory on the introduction of Iron Age technology into the region of by peoples from the East.


"Don Franco's" Research in Valcamonica

Don Franco, as Father Franco Bontempi is lovingly referred to by admiring friends throughout the region, invited Dr. Pauline Weiss and me to examine his evidence at first hand. We attended affairs, we visited pertinent sites. As a consequence of his influence we were given carte blanche access to the archives of the region. I was assigned to lecture to two of Don Franco's classes, one for students and the other for teachers. I was likewise honored to address the partisans who fought in the Alpine region against Nazi contingents. The occasion was a commemorative affair held yearly high atop a mountain at the grave sites of those who had fallen in battle.

We were chauffeured daily by two of Don Franco's friends, and by the Mayor(ess) of Lusine, one of the towns in the area

Exposure to the history of the Bontempi family was an education in itself. They lived in Valcamonica (the Valle Camonica), the valley of the ancient Cammuni people. It is a spectacular, exquisitely beautiful valley between two craggy Alpine mountain ranges east of the city of Brescia. The valley encompasses the jewel-like lake Iseo, and stretches from the Po Valley up along the Oglio River to the Swiss border. The Bontempi family dates back the 12th century under that name, and has been traced back to about 1000 CE.

Two murals once decorated a former Bontempi family palazzo in Lusine, dating to the 14th century. They were removed from the family home and are now exhibited in the city hall of the town. One of the murals, some 40 feet long, contains the larger-than-life figures of five secular sages. King Solomon is prominently featured in the middle between Aristotle, Socrates, Solon and an old wise man of the mountains. The selection of characters reflects the intellectual concerns of the family. Solon (c.640 -c.559 B.C.E.), was an Athenian merchant, lawgiver and poet who, when appointed to reform the constitution, set free all people who had been enslaved for debt. He also admitted a fourth class to the Ecclesia, thus laying the foundations for Athenian democracy.

The second mural, fourteen feet long with life-size figures, illustrates Esther being crowned Queen by King Aheuserus on the right. The former Queen and the evil figure of Haman being banished are pictured on the left.

Don Franco's Judaic origin was undoubtedly one of the motivations that impelled him to delve further into the history of the Jews of the Brescian region In a third book, published as Economia del Ferro, research on the history of the iron industry in Valcamonica from the 15th to the 19th century, he documents the evidence that Jews were involved in the industry in an early period.

The evidence uncovered about the hitherto ignored contribution of the Jews to the culture and industry of the province of Brescia, has been presented by Don Franco in Italy, the United States and Canada, through his lecture and exhibition entitled Ferro and Stella (Iron and the Star of David).

[Right: A detail of one of the 14th century murals from the Bontempi ancestral home in Bienno, Italy, showing a very virginal Esther being crowned queen. It is now displayed in the town's city hall. Photo by the author.]

"When I started my research for the show," wrote Don Franco, "I heard it said that everything [on the subject of Jewish presence] had been already unearthed, and there was nothing was left to add. From the end of the eighteenth century there were studies made about the presence of the Jews in Brescia. [It was said that historians] Glissenti, Zanelli, Gamba, Guerrini, had already taken all the sources into consideration. All the same, this previous research had severe limitations. In the first place, they did not know the Hebrew language, and consulted only documents written in Latin or Italian from Cammuni archives. Moreover, these scholars wrote about the Jews without connecting them to the Brescian economy. Excluding them in this manner from the historical and social fabric justified the anti-Semitism of the 1500's, a time in which the Jews had been alienated from society. Finally, during the Fascist period, [their studies] served to resuscitate Renaissance anti-Semitism in order to justify the racial laws. The limits of these previous scholars were therefore twofold: a fundamentally anti-Semitic prejudice and an ignorance of Jewish sources."

Don Franco is conversant with more than a dozen languages. In addition to English, Italian, French and German, he has mastered the ancient languages Akkadian, Etruscan, Celtic, Hebrew, Aramaic, Sanscrit, Mycenaean, Latin, and Greek, as well as Cammuni, the ancient native language of the Valcamonica valley in which his family was resident for at least a thousand years. This facility enabled him to etymologically trace the route of the ancient metalworking artisans from the Mesopotamian milieu up the Danube across Transylvania into Central Europe, and down into Valcamonica.

High up on the Valcamonica mountain sides are numerous, expansive bald-faced rocks, covered with thousands upon thousands of engravings, graffiti dating back to 8000 B.C.E. The ancient artists continued this artistic practice for many millennia from the Prehistoric through the Proto-historic, Copper, Bronze and Iron Ages. One of the areas in which great assemblages of engravings are found has been set aside as the National Park of Naquane, with several miles of trails.

The first attempt at a chronological and typograph-ic analysis of the Cammuni rock engravings is credited to the Jewish scholar Emmanuel Anati. The astounding discovery that the Iron Age engravings employed the Etruscan alphabet upset all previous theories on the provenance and areas of settlements of the Etruscans.

The Etruscan alphabet was adapted in the region to the particular phonetic requirements of the language spoken by the Cammunis. Don Franco, as the inhabitants of the region lovingly refer to Father Bontempi, being familiar with both languages, was uniquely able to interpolate this variation. Don Franco identified the Etruscan alphabet as of Semitic origin.

"The arrival of iron workers in Valcamonica," states Don Franco, "can be fixed with precision, taking account of certain archaeological evidence." He goes on to quote Emmanuel Anati, who places the initiation of the Iron Age in the region at 850 BCE. The arrival of ferric technology coincides with the arrival of the Etruscans.

The Iron Age came into being in the Israelite villages springing into existence in the Canaanite hills in the 12th century BCE.3 The Etruscan connection may be, therefore, an intriguing new development, one which may harbor a revolutionary historical impact.

"Considering the movement from East to West and the slowness of the diffusion of the new technology," continues Don Franco, "it can be affirmed that the ironworkers began operations in Valcamonica between the end of the ninth and the beginning of the eighth century BCE, almost a century and a half before [it appeared in] Switzerland."

Etruscan inscriptions dated to about 700 BCE. were recently identified near Como, as well as in other areas of northern Italy.

Industrial and commercial activity spread out from the area between the sixth and fourth centuries. The importance of iron for tools and weapons led to Cammuni contacts with the Myceneans, Celts, Romans and Greeks. An incursion of the Celts led to a period of dominance coinciding with the development of the La Tène culture to the north from about 300 to 189 BCE. Historians had hitherto proposed the initiation of ferric technology in Europe to the area of the La Tène culture. It is now a reasonable assumption that the technology went north from Valcamonica, where it had already been practiced for centuries.


Etruscans and Semites in Valcamonica

The Etruscan inscriptions in Valcamonica helped Don Franco resolve an old mystery. Based on evidence culled from their presence in central Italy, it was widely accepted

that the Etruscans came from Lydia (south-eastern Anatolia) or from elsewhere in the Near East. The Roman historians Livio and Pliny, however, thought they came from the Alpine region. These references and other indications led some archaeologists to propose that the Etruscans and the area's pre-Roman technologies were indigenous to Italy.

Valcamonica's etymological evidence led Don Franco to determine that both the Etruscans and the Iron Age technologies did indeed come from the East, at the same time. Many medieval Cammuni terms derive from the Celtic, Greek, or Latin languages, as can be expected, but Etruscan linguistic roots are particularly discernable in relation to ferric technology.

For example, the ancient regional measure for iron ore, lanxum, is reflected in the name of an area near an ancient mine, Langolina. The measurer of the ore was called Terlengo, a word composed of two parts, ter\leng, and derives from the Etruscan ter\ces\lancum, literally, "the judge of iron measuring."

The Latin language is itself deeply indebted to Etruscan. The transcription process is visible in a reference in a deed near "the property of the Bontempi brothers," referring to "the district of Vitioli, or of the iron furnace,..." Hidden in the Latin terms vitiolum/vitiolo is the more ancient term, visi/ol, a modification of the Etruscan terms for water[power] and fire, the two essential elements for conducting the ferric industry. The exceptional availability of waterpower and of hardwoods for fuel, was the basis for conducting the ferric "waterpower/fire" industry near the iron mines.

"The most ancient linguistic expression for an iron-working shop is verseol, vitiolo: i.e., a furnace near a torrent."

The Etruscan term for "overseer of the forge" is e macstrua; the Latin equivalent is magister e. It reappears in the name Mastalini.

Likewise, the name Salamino is composed of sala/min; sala is Etruscan for "operator," min is Etruscan for "master," ergo: "Master artisan."

Don Franco goes on to analyze scores of other terms in the ancient documents and names of the region, tracing them to Greek, Celtic, Latin or Etruscan origins. Most significantly, he traces many Etruscan and other words of Semitic derivation back to Akkadian origins. Worthy of additional mention here is the designation "artisan" with the use of the Etruscan verb us, i.e.: "to craft." The district Luzzana was originally written as l'Ussana, which in turn was a contraction of the Latin phrase illi ussana ("the artisan district"), which in turn derives from the Etruscan us.

Don Franco also corrects derivations cited by scholars in the past. For example, the regional common name Berzo, also found in the form Berse, was previously assumed to have come from the German Berg ("hill"). Don Franco demonstrates that the name is derived instead from the Etruscan verse\berse: "the site of the furnaces."

The Semitic connection is likewise etymologically apparent. Don Franco notes that the Canaanite (Ugaritic) God-smith, Chuzen, is reflected in the Camunni word for the process of making wrought iron, cuder, literally : "beating iron." The town, Cuzen, and the family name de Cudera are of the same derivation.

Agriculture, albeit limited by the rugged terrain, was nonetheless practiced, and the ethnicity of its ancient immigrant eastern practitioners is likewise reflected in the local dialect. Grain-mills, Caramola in Valcamonica dialect, is composed of cara/mola. Cara derives from the Etruscan root Car, "to build"; mola is Italian for "millstone." The word thus translates to a building containing a millstone.

[Left: A step into the Bienno smithies is a step back into medieval times. The forges are powered by huge water-wheels, fed by a viaduct from the Oglio River and geared to 18" diameter logs headed with massive three-foot iron hammers. The artisans turn out farm equipments and other iron artifacts. Some Bienno smithies have been in operation since the 12th century. The iron industry of the region dates back to pre-Roman times. Photo by the author.]



Fire and Water: Industry Elements

The presence of iron ore (the only economically viable iron mines in Italy), together with the abundance of wood and waterpower, was the basis of an industry which flourished into the twentieth century. The involvement of Jews in the industry is evidenced by gravestone inscriptions. Another Judaic cemetery, we were grieved to find, lies under Santa Giulia, now the town museum.

The museum is a vast complex of buildings surrounding several courts. They include the church of Santa Giulia, the Basilica of San Salvatore, a monastery, three cloisters, a building called Santa Maria in Solario. Excavations under some of the buildings and in the courts have uncovered the ruins of Roman buildings and traces of the Jewish cemetery.

Jewish presence and activity in Valcamonica prior to the 15th century can be interpolated from distinctly Jewish family names appearing after the time of the Inquisition on gravestones and other memorializing inscriptions in a Christian environment. On the gravestones in the cemetery adjoining one small church, and applied to the wall of the church are the insignia and information about two distinguished families with the surnames David. The family name Simone appears elsewhere, as well as other names indicating Jewish origins.

Iron-working continues in Valcamonica, and is still powered by waterpower. A wooden viaduct follows the Torrente Oglio down the mountain, branching off to turn huge water wheels of a few of the many smithies that once operated in the town, as well as of a grain mill, still grinding out flour with a millstone more than a meter in diameter. The equipment and the handwork in these smithies have not changed over the centuries. A step into these crowded workshops is a step backwards into medieval times.

[Right: The reading room of the Querignano libray in Brescia. The library contains much historically important Judaic material but hitherto has not been delved into by Jewish historians. Photograph by the author.]

The Querigniana Library

A most unusual library, housed in a magnificent building in the heart of Brescia, contains several hundred thousand ancient books and manuscripts. Don Franco Bontempi informed the director of our visit, and we were not only given carte blanche to examine ancient books and texts but personally assisted by the curator of the section devoted to books by and about Jews. We were told that they have rarely been looked into.

The library was founded in 1747. It was opened to the public by Cardinal Angelo Maria Querini, formerly librarian at the Vatican library, and then well known as a bibliophile. He was obviously wealthy, for he had a monumental palace designed and built by the architect Maretti. He launched the assembly of a vast number of ancient scholarly books by donating his remarkable private collection, and by leaving a substantial fund for the expansion of the library. Before his death he passed the administration of the facility to the Brescian town council.

The entrance hall at the top of a monumental staircase is decorated with magnificent frescos painted by Albirizzi and Scotti, and by a bust of the founder sculptured by Callegari. The main reading room, as well as the smaller ones were similarly frescoed and furnished.

It was thrilling indeed to see a printed edition of a book of poetic compositions by Immanuel Ben Salomon, published by Gerson Soncino in 1491, and other texts printed by that famous fifteenth century publishing family of the Brescian area.

Included in the Querigniana collection is a most important series of 34 massive tomes edited by a churchman, Blasio Ugolino, issued in 1744. They contain a compendium of everything known to the church of the times about Jewish customs, laws, institutions, and sacred rites. Written from the church's point of view, and therefore requiring rigid interpolation, the series nonetheless should provide a vast amount of information about Jewish life and history prior to the date of its publication.

The books are written in Latin and contain voluminous quotations from Hebrew texts and documents, some of which have not survived in any other form. The Latin is interspersed heavily with Hebrew and Aramaic quotations on virtually every page.


The Kaufman Collection

A project worthy of further investigation is a most valuable and important collection of Hebrew literature, sold by a Brescian area Jew, Kaufman, to a Hungarian buyer. Father Franco Bontempi, suspecting that much local and other literature of great value had thus left the area, and fearing that it would remain unnoticed, pursued the matter, and located the collection in a Hungarian university's library. He managed to obtain a catalogue listing of the sale.

Well over a thousand ancient books are in the collection, dating from 1477 to the end of the nineteenth century, with a large proportion from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The books were published in virtually every country in which Jews existed. The first 50 books listed, for example, were published in Jerusalem, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Berlin, Warsaw, Cambridge, Constantinople, Venice, Prsemyl, Krakow, Soncino, Vienna, Munich, London, Vilna, Amsterdam and Cleve.


The Gonzaga Connection

The research being followed by Father Franco Bontempi is parallel to that done by me in the adjoining province of Piedmont, where numerous Jewish communities lived in relative security. Casale Montferrato was the administrative capital of the ruling Marquises Montferrato, a family related to the succeeding Gonzaga dynasty. It was the center of Jewish life of the region.4 The continuous existence of a Jewish community in Casale Montferrato as a viable, free community for centuries was unique to Christian Europe. Nowhere in Europe did the Jews experience less persecution than under the Montferrato and successor Gonzaga dynasties. Many Jews enjoyed special privileges at the court of the Gonzagas at Mantua. The exalted position of such Jews was codified by the issuance of a patente di familiare; that gave the recipient the run of the palace and many other important privileges.

The patentes were issued during periods when Jews elsewhere were being expelled, confined to ghettos or subjected to severe restrictions and taxation.

The journals of the Casale Montferrato Judaic community begin in 1589, when the Gonzaga regime granted a large degree of autonomy to the Jewish community of Casale Montferrato. The Jews had enjoyed Ducal tolerance in the area before that time. They had impacted significantly on the cultural, commercial and industrial life of the area since pre-Roman times.

The Gonzagas were named after a small town in the Mantua province. They ruled at Mantua for three centuries, as Marquises from 1432 and as Dukes from 1530. They were always at war with the dukes of Milan, and welcomed the Jews being persecuted in or expelled from Milan. The tenth and last Duke of Mantua sided with the French against the Austrian Emperor Joseph I, and died in exile in 1708.

The Gonzaga court was a beehive of Jewish cultural activity, in which music, theater, science, and literature flourished.

A community of glassmakers was brought from Palestine by the crusading Marquises di Montferrato. They formed a cooperative village in the Montferrato fief at Altare ("High Place"), thereafter referred to as the Università d'Altare. Members of two historically significant Altarese glassmaking families were honored with patentes di familiare at the Gonzaga court: the Dagnias and the Perottos.5

An Oduardo Dagnia and his four sons left Italy to pioneer the art of glassmaking in the Weald, Stourbridge, and Newcastle in England; A Bernardo Perrotto followed his uncle to France, where Bernardo developed a casting system of producing flat glass panels. The ability to produce large panes of flat window glass was a major advance in vitric technology. In 1669 Perotto was granted a royal patent for the revolutionary process. Subsequently Perrotto patented formulas for making opaque white glass (porcelaine en verre), of making red glass (rouge des Anciens). These and other significant break-through won Bernardo Perrotto a well-deserved, permanent place in the glassmaker's hall of fame.

A branch of the Perrotto family emigrated to England, and also played an important role in the development of the Bristol and Stourbridge glass-making industry.

A Jewish metal-worker Salamone de Sessa likewise worked at the Gonzaga court. He was much in demand, and could boast of such other prestigious patrons as Cesare Borgia. Deplorably, Salamone later converted, and became renowned as Ercole de' Fedeli.

The theater and music were integral to life at the Gonzaga palazzo. Jewish actors were famous for their histrionic ability. Dramatic performances in honor of a visiting grandee generally devolved upon Jewish productions. It is reported that performances on Friday had to be performed early enough to end at the Sabbath, and were postponed on Jewish holidays. Among many notable playwrights was the Hebrew poet Leone de' Sommi Portaleone, a prolific writer of prose and verse. On the one hand, he founded the synagogue in near-by Portaleone; on the other hand he wrote non-Jewish plays for the Gonzaga court. In 1556 de Sommi authored Dialogues on the Dramatic Art, the first such work ever written in a European language.

A giant of musical history was Salamone de' Rossi, the inventor of the symphonic musical format Salamone produced both synagogue and secular music, and was the "Beethoven of his times." Salamone had been preceded by an earlier composer known as Giuseppe Hebreo ("Joseph the Jew"), who collaborated at the court of Lorenzo de Medici with the Jewish writer on the art of dancing, Guglielmo da Pesaro. Another of the many singers, instrumentalists and composers was David Civita, whose works were also performed in Venice, and Allegro Porto, who dedicated three volumes of his compositions to Emperor Ferdinand.

It has been documented by a chronicler of the region that the first violin was the product of a Brescian Jew. Violin-making thereafter became a tour-de-force of the nearby town of Cremona, and the violins of Amati (who may have Jewish or of Jewish origin), Stradivarius and other Cremonians are now the avidly sought instruments of the world's great violinists.

The research into and documentation of the extent of those contributions to the industry and culture of the area continues to be an ongoing labor of love by that remarkable scholar, Father Franco Bontempi.

[Left: Gerson Soncino, Meshal ha-qadmoni, wood engraving # 10, "Teaching the Lion." Soncino's allegorical animals expressed opinions that could not be openly aired. In this illustration, the lowly but literate animals teaching the ruling but illiterate lion bears a significance far beyond the simple fable it depicts. Soncino's books are among the earliest ever printed.]

Printing and Papermaking

Not least of the important cultural attributes of the Brescian region was due to the introduction by Jews in the fifteenth century of printing industries into Mantua, Soncino, Sabbioneta, and Cremona. Near-by Venice, Ferrara, and Parma were likewise the cultural beneficiaries of Judaic printing presses in that early period, as well as other posts in Italy as far south as Reggio di Calabria.

At the outset, the art of printing was mainly a Jewish undertaking, despite the credit given to Gutenberg for its "invention." It is timely to recall, as Cecil Roth reminds us, that "As early as 1444 - six years, that is, before the date generally assigned to the beginning of Gutenberg's activity - an agreement for the cutting of a Hebrew fount 'according to the art of writing artificially,' was entered into at Avignon between a wandering German craftsman and a member of the local [Jewish] community."6 It is obvious that if fonts were already being produced on contract by the Jews of Avignon, that printing had already been invented, and that the Avignon Jews were knowledgeable in the art.

To reinforce that conclusion, we take note of the existence of another pre-Gutenberg "transaction between Procop Waldvogel of Prague and a Jew named David of Calderousse, whereby Waldvogel taught David the science and art of printing, and bound himself to give him 27 matrices for Hebrew letters."7

Gutenberg, although the son of a patrician, started out in Strasbourg as an apprentice goldsmith, generally a Jewish craft. Both Gutenberg and his partner John Fust owe their business to Jews of Enheim, a village in Alsace; they supplied the funds to enable them to establish and conduct their printing business.

It is difficult to determine just where printing was first introduced into Italy. The earliest date registered in a Jewish/Italian printed book is 1475, only 25 years after Gutenberg operated a press. It is evident that printing had been already well under way in Italy for some years before that time. We owe the preservation of the early Jewish printed literature to a righteous Christian, Giambernardo de Rossi of Parma, a professor of Oriental language at Parma's university. David Amram wrote that: "While others pursued gaberdined Jews through hooting mobs... [and] preached from pulpit and rostrum against the perfidious tribe of Israel, de Rossi sat in his library and with loving care, as though himself of the seed of Abraham, studied the words of the sages of Israel. With scholar's care and lover's patience, this noble Christian sought the cradle books of the Hebrew presses... Dying, he bequeathed his books to the Grand Ducal Library at Parma, where among his rare and beautiful Hebraica there lies a time-stained, tear-stained and much mutilated volume, whose one hundred and sixteen pages can tell a tale much sadder than stands printed there in the clear type which Abraham ben Garten ben Isaac set in Reggio di Calabria in 1475."8

It is likewise fitting to recall that printing was made feasible by the use of paper. Jews traveling the "glass, linen, silk and spice route" into the heart of China learned paper-making from the Chinese, and brought the technology to Europe. They established the first paper-making factory in Spain at Játiva, near Valencia.

The Jews began the use of paper by copying their holy literature on the serviceable sheets. This led members of the church hierarchy to suspect paper as a subversive material. The Abbot of Cluny, ("Peter the Venerable," 1092-1158), "recorded his objection to paper as a Jewish production, on which the unbelievers copied the Talmud and other obnoxious literature"9

Judaic history in the region of Mantua and contiguous Brescia extends back into Roman times. The documentation of Jewish presence and activity in the Roman, Middle age and Medieval periods has survived only in bits and pieces. The evidence that did survive pierces the fog of a millennium and a half of Christian obfuscation, and attests to the continuous presence of a significant industrial, scientific and intellectual Jewish community.

For example, we find that Abraham Ibn Ezra (1092-1167), poet, exegetist, and translator of an astronomical work from the Arabic into Hebrew, wrote a grammatical work at Mantua in 1140, three hundred years before the Gonzagas became the Marquises of the city. Ibn Ezra, a restless, brilliant scholar, was unencumbered with worldly possessions, being a poor participant in worldly affairs. He said of himself that if he were to sell candles the sun would never set, and if he were to deal in shrouds, none would die.

"It may be said that [Abraham ben Ezra] created Hebrew prose for scientific purposes... He was a thorough rationalist and believed that a knowledge of grammar was indispensable for the understanding of Holy writ..."10


The Martinengos and the Jews

The tolerance practiced by the Gonzagas was also practiced by the Martinengos, a feudal family of the Brescian region originating from Valle Camonica (otherwise written as Valcamonica). The known history of the Martinengos goes far back into antiquity, extending into the past long before the Gonzagas became the lords of Mantua. It is suspected that the Martinengos may, indeed, have had Jewish roots, for their rise to nobility stemmed from their involvement in the iron industry of Valle Camonica (see Newsletter 68), and may go as far back as the Roman period.

Don Franco discovered an undercurrent of Jewish cultural and technological tradition that predated the advent of the Montferratos and the related Gonzagas relating to the Martinengos.

The family Martinengo of Valcamonica invested their profits gained from iron work in the purchase of land in the valley of the Po River south of Brescia. Father Franco Bontempi found that Jewish tenant farmers were employed on the Martinengo estates during the time when the rest of the Christian world was vehemently persecuting them.. At the time of the Crusades, Valcamonica Jews are recorded to have been long involved in agriculture in the area of the town of Asola, central to the Brescian flatlands. Between 1150 and 1200 a churchman, Arnoldo da Brescia, preached venomously against the Jews, and his exhortations inspired "a little pogrom."11

The records show that, nonetheless, the Jews continued to farm on the Mantinengo fief into the Renaissance period, despite ecclesiastic prohibitions against Jewish land ownership, and despite continuing anti-Semitic fulminations of churchmen. This situation could only subsist under a protective mantle of the local lords.

As the centuries passed, the Martinengos were ennobled as the lords of more than a score of villages on their property. They ruled over an extensive territory; to protect their fief and its inhabitants against marauders and ambitious neighbors, they built several great moat-protected castles, one of which lay between the Jewish communities of Asola and Soncino.

[Right: Gerson Soncino, Meshal ha-qadmoni, wood engraving # 54, "The Book and the Sun." The Soncino woodcutsdepict all aspects of Judaic life. This illustrations attest to advanced astronomical observations as integral to Judaic culture. The paper on which Soncino printed was produced ay nearby Salo, where Jewish entrepreneurs had introduced papermaking.]

The latter village became famous for the Hebrew press established by a German-Jewish family that took the name of the village, Soncino,.for their own. The family traces its origin to a Moses of Speyer in Alsace, who lived about the mid-thirteenth century. The family was probably among those expelled from Speyer by a general edict in 1435. A Jew known as Moses Mentzlan (meaning "manikin," a rather contemptuous reference to his small stature), fled to the Bavarian city of Furth. Subsequently his son, Samuel, crossed the Alps to settle in the tiny Brescian city of Orzinovi. On May 9, 1454, Francesco Sforza, Duke of Milan, issued a patente granting Samuel and his family permission to settle in the fortified city of Soncino and to open a bank. Samuel's son, Israel Nathan Soncino, helped his father in business but took up the practice of medicine. In 1480, he turned his talents to the art of printing, and founded a press which became renowned the world over.

The Martinengos also had several town palazzi in the city of Brescia itself; they are now public buildings that retain muraled walls and ceilings executed by renowned artists, superb examples of structural and architectural craftsmanship. A twelfth century Martinengo building, an earlier and far more modest family dwelling, is located in a small village near Brescia and is now a kindergarten.

The difference between the treatment of the Jews by the Martinengos, Gonzagas, and Montferratos, and that of the Jews in the adjoining virulent Christian environments, is dramatically illustrated in two towns on either side of Lake Garda. On the western shore, nested along an expansive bay of the beautiful lake, a Jewish community flourished at Saló. The Jews thrived in the lucrative paper industry they had introduced there into Italy. One of the earliest town documents, drawn in 1320, records the sale of a handwritten bible by the scribe, Mosè ben Abraham Sefardi. The paper industry gained commercial importance as Jewish printing presses sprung into being throughout the area as far as Venice. Saló was the home of Nathan, the renowned poet, and of other scholars through the ages. The town is currently an outstanding resort, frequented mainly by appreciative Austrian and German sun-worshipers.

Directly across Lake Garda, the town of Trento became infamous for accusations of the practice of infanticide in the conduct of Jewish ritual. The malignant accusations were launched by Simonino da Trento in 1475, and thereafter echoed throughout Christendom. It was the town in which the equally notorious Council of Trent, in session from 1545 to 1563, launched the Counter-Reformation and codified antisemitism into church dogma.

In further contrast, let it suffice to mention that soon thereafter, in Mantua from 1573-1575, Azariah dei Rossi (1514-1578), was free to publish his work, The Light of Eyes. "This scholar was far ahead of his times" affirm Margolis and Marx, "in applying scientific method to Jewish literary and historical questions."12

To the southeast lay the duchy of Ferrara, ruled by the House of Este. Hercules I (1471-1505), extended a welcome to twenty-one Jewish families in the very year they were expelled from Spain. "The immigrants took an active part in developing the commerce of the city... they had their own separate organization with synagogues, rabbis, school and burying ground... In 1531 the German Jews added their own synagogue, in addition to the Sephardic and native-Italian houses of worship."13

The renowned Judaic historical figures, Joseph Nasi and his aunt Gracia and many other notables found refuge in Ferrara. The city continued to be a bulwark of religious liberty until the Estes dynasty was extinguished.

The benign climate of tolerance in Ferrara did not last. In 1597, the duchy was added to the Papal states. When the new administrator, Cardinal Aldobrandini, entered the city, he was greeted by a populace shouting, "Down with the Jews." Over half the Jews fled to Venice, Modena, and Mantua.

Venice, in turn, recurrently expelled the Jews, and the area under the Gonzagas and Martinengos again provided convenient refuge. Glassmakers left the Venetian glassmaking island of Murano in these traumatic times to establish themselves in the Università d'Altare, where the glassmaking community had been brought from Palestine by a Gonzaga antecedent, the Marquise de Montferrato.14

To the west Jews were persecuted and expelled at various times by the Milanese overlords. They likewise found a safe harbor in the Gonzaga fief until they could determine where they could best find peace and freedom.

In the critical period from 1490 to 1591, Valcamonica played host to outstanding Jewish entrepreneurs and scholars from elsewhere in Italy. Many settled in Verolanuova, a charming little town along the Oglio river in the heart of Valcamonica. The famed Abraham Finza was among those who spent more than a score of years in the Alpine village. His correspondence with Lucrezia Gonzaga about the plight of the Jews expelled from Spain and other matters is most revealing.

Leone Bassano and Leone Soave were other Judaic notables who established themselves and their families in the little Alpine town.


Bandiera Rosso; Bandiera Verde

Valcamonica has a longstanding tradition of resisting tyranny. The peoples of the valley were the last of Italy to submit to Roman hegemony. They were among the last to come under church dominance. Throughout the centuries in which powers on every side vied for control over the valley's iron resources and its valuable arms and tools industries, they maintained their dialect, customs and as much independence as circumstances allowed.

The racial laws ignominiously installed in Italy by Mussolini in cowtowing to Hitler's dictates were almost universally ignored in Valcamonica. The incursion of Nazi Germany's armed forces sparked fierce resistance. Young people from the valley's towns fled to mountain hideouts, from which vantage they harassed the German outposts and lines of communication.

Jews were hidden, and many joined the partisans. Among them was a Jewish attorney, Levi Sandre, Levi joined the partisans, welded the scattered, unorganized resistance into a cohesive fighting force, and, as their commander, led them in successful engagements against Nazi contingents. After the war, Levi became a magistrate, and finally a member of Italy's Supreme Court.

Politics were set aside during the Nazi occupation. The left-orientated partisans, under their red banner (the Bandiera Rosso), and the center/right partisans, under their green banner (the Bandiera Verde), cooperated in their common interest during those difficult times. Pauline and I were bemused by a heated argument between veterans of the two groups on which group had more diligently hidden out the community's Jews! The exchange took place at the grave sites of the partisans who had fallen in battle.

The partisans were buried high atop an Alpine peak near one of their hideouts, where a commemorative ceremony is held each year. The precipitous, snow-covered peaks that had borne witness to the heroic stand of the partisans, stand again in silent witness of this annual event. The surviving veterans, now grey-haired, dress in Alpine shorts, an eagle's feather raking defiantly backward from their peaked hats. They line up on either side of the grave sites, the Greens on one side, the Reds on the other.

A mass was held, followed by an oration by the valley's historian, a retired professor, who went on at length about the valley's tradition of resistance to tyranny and the need for being ever vigilant against new forms of tyranny. Don Franco had arranged for me to represent the Jews on this occasion. In my address I thanked the partisans who had fallen and those who survived on three accounts: as a human being, as a Jew, and as an individual who had lost 35 members of his family in the holocaust.

After the ceremony, a dinner with a most remarkable menu was held in the City Hall of the town. Polenta, potatoes, local herbs, and a sausage made largely of non-meat fillers were served, the foods that were consumed by the partisans in their sojourn in the mountains.

Much research remains to be done in this region of Italy, so rich in traces of the Judaic imprint. Don Franco's command of indigenous and derivative languages, his intimate knowledge of the area, his familiarity with and access to archival material, his passionate and untiring devotion to the reconstitution of his own ancestral heritage, make him uniquely positioned to pursue that work. He deserves the full-hearted support of the Jewish community.


Notes

The facts regarding Brescia, the Etruscans and the Martinengos were derived from three of Father Franco Bontempi's books, and are too numerous to be annotated:

Ferro e Stella, printed in two editions, one complete and the other employed as a catalog of and reference material for the expositions assembled by Bontempi and at which he lectures. The subtitle translates to"Jewish Brescia in the Renaissance Italy."

Bienno, History, Society, and Economy, elaborates Bontempi's theory on the introduction of Iron Age technology into the region of by peoples from the East.

Economia del Ferro, research on the history of the iron industry in Valcamonica from the 15th to the 19th century.

[Left: One of the Martinengo castles south of Brescia, dating to the 14th century. The Martinengos were neighbors of the Gonzagas at near-by Mantua. Jews farmed in the Martinengo fief, and introduced printing at Soncino, a few miles west of the castles. Jews enjoyed a tolerance unique to Christian Europe under the Martinengos and the Gonzagas, and contributed vastly to the region's economy and culture. Father Franco Bontempi's research has gone far to illuminate this important facet of European and Judaic history. Photograph by the author.]

1. HHF Fact Paper 28, The Jews of Aquileia

2. HHF Fact Papers 15, Silkmaking and the Jews, and HHF Fact Paper 3, The Silk Route; A Judaic Odyssey.

3. HHF Fact Paper 4, Iron-working; a Judaic Heritage.

4. HHF Fact Paper 24, The Jews of Casale Montferrato

5. HHF Fact Paper 25, The Glassmakers of Altare.

6. Cecil Roth, The Jewish Contribution to Civilization, 49.

7. Amram, The Makers of Hebrew Books in Italy, 15.

8. David Amram , Ibid., 23-24.

9. Roth, Ibid., 50.

10. Max L. Margolia and Alexander Marx, A History of the Jewish People, p. 333.

11. Bontempi, Il Ferro e la Stella XVII.

12. Margolis and Marx, Ibid., 503-4.

13. Margolis and Marx, Ibid., 503.

14. HHF Fact Paper 25 ,The Glassmakers of Altare