Misplaced Pages

#797202

50-573: Sulmona was one of the principal cities of the Paeligni , an Italic tribe , but no notice of it is found in history before the Roman conquest. A tradition alluded to by Ovid and Silius Italicus , which ascribed its foundation to Solymus , a Phrygian and one of the companions of Aeneas , is evidently a mere etymological fiction. The first mention of Sulmo occurs in the Second Punic War , when its territory

100-577: A POW camp in both world wars. During World War I , it housed Austrian prisoners captured in the Isonzo and Trentino campaigns; during World War II, it was home to as many as 3,000 British and Commonwealth officers and other ranks captured in North Africa. The camp itself was built on a hillside and consisted of a number of brick barracks surrounded by a high wall. During World War II, conditions in Sulmona for both

150-505: A large province, as well the seat of a tribunal and of a fair, which it however lost with the arrival of the Angevins , becoming part of the Kingdom of Naples . Despite that, it continued to expand and a new line of walls was added in the 14th century. In the 16th century a flourishing paper industry was started. In 1706 the city was nearly razed by an earthquake. While much of the medieval city

200-565: A leading public opponent of fascism , Stalinism , and Mafia infiltration of the trade unions for the purposes of labor racketeering and corruption. Born, raised, and educated in Italy, Tresca was editor of an Italian socialist newspaper and secretary of the Italian Federation of Railroad Workers before he emigrated to the United States in 1904. After a three-year spell as secretary of

250-435: A protest against the arrest of Dr. Mannix. This was done by pickets walking on the docks with placards, calling on the men to leave the ships. So far as I was concerned, this was rather an amusing incident, because I had a placard which read something like this, "Hear the call of the blood and refuse to work on British ships". I realised that the call of the blood was addressed to Greeks, Italians, Lascars, etc., and when they saw

300-428: A young woman with a placard they came up to enquire what the strike was about. My efforts to translate "Hear the call of the blood" into Italian were funny, but I found one word which they all seemed to know was "tyranny - Irlanda", and smiling and nodding, they would all walk away. The picketing was extremely effective because when we were holding our meetings it was a thrilling sight when, from time to time, we would hear

350-564: Is known historically of Sulmo, which, however, appears to have continued to be a considerable provincial town. Ovid speaks of it as one of the three municipal towns whose districts composed the territory of the Paeligni: and this is confirmed both by Pliny and the Liber Coloniarum ; yet it does not seem to have ever been large, and Ovid himself designates it as a small provincial town. From the Liber Coloniarum we learn also that it had received

400-575: Is little doubt that, for religious and private purposes at least, the Paelignian dialect lasted down to the middle of the 1st century BC. Carlo Tresca Carlo Tresca (March 9, 1879 – January 11, 1943) was an Italian-American dissident and newspaper editor, orator, and labor organizer and activist who was a leader of the Industrial Workers of the World during the 1910s. He is remembered as

450-439: Is more probable that Sulmo was confiscated and its lands assigned by Sulla to a body of his soldiers. In all events it is certain that Sulmo was a well-peopled and considerable town in 49 BC, when it was occupied by Domitius Calvinus with a garrison of seven cohorts; but the citizens, who were favorably inclined towards Julius Caesar , opened their gates to his lieutenant M. Antonius as soon as he presented himself. Not much more

500-775: The Communist Party of the Soviet Union . In 1937, he was a member of the Dewey Commission , which cleared Leon Trotsky of all charges made during the Moscow Trials . Tresca also used his newspapers to mount a public campaign criticising the Mafia. He was assassinated in New York, January 1943 allegedly by Carmine Galante . Carlo Tresca was born March 9, 1879, in Sulmona , Abruzzo , Italy,

550-603: The Dewey Commission , which cleared Leon Trotsky of all charges made during the Moscow Trials . In early 1938, Tresca publicly accused the Soviets of kidnapping Juliet Stuart Poyntz to prevent her defection from the Communist Party USA underground apparatus. Tresca alleged that before she had disappeared, Poyntz had talked to him about "exposing the communist movement". On January 11, 1943, in New York City , Tresca

SECTION 10

#1732848110798

600-723: The Rome–Sulmona–Pescara railway , the Terni–Sulmona railway and the Sulmona-Isernia railway. Relating to Sulmona POW camp, Villa Orsini and Fontana d'Amore: Paeligni The Paeligni or Peligni were an Italic tribe who lived in the Valle Peligna , in what is now Abruzzo , central Italy . The Paeligni are first mentioned as a member of a confederacy that included the Marsi , Marrucini , and Vestini , with which

650-625: The Adriatic coast. The anarchist and labour organiser Carlo Tresca was born there in 1879 and was active in the Italian Railroad Workers' Federation until emigrating to the US in 1904 to escape a prison term. Sulmona's strategic position also made it a target for air raids during World War II . The railway station, the industrial sections and parts of the old town were damaged, but today they have been mostly restored. Campo 78 at Sulmona served as

700-580: The Italian Socialist Federation of North America, he joined the Industrial Workers of the World in 1912, and was involved in strikes across the United States over the rest of the decade. He was jailed in 1925 after printing a paid advertisement for a birth control pamphlet in one of his newspapers. During the 1930s, Tresca was a vocal critic of both Benito Mussolini 's Fascist government in his native Italy, and of Joseph Stalin and

750-617: The Minnesota action, ultimately being released without going to trial. In August 1920, Tresca became involved tangentially in the Irish War of Independence . As Sidney Czira , secretary of Cumann na mBan in New York, and sister of Grace Gifford , later recalled, "Picketing of the British Embassy in Washington had been going on from 1916 onwards and I remember a very successful picketing that

800-590: The Paelignians having fought hard against even this degree of subjection. Each member of the confederacy entered the alliance with Rome as an independent unit, and in none was there any town or community politically separate from the tribe as a whole. Thus the Vestini issued coins of its own in the 3rd century; each of them appears in the list of the allies in the Social War . How purely Italic in sentiment these communities of

850-698: The Romans came into conflict in the Second Samnite War , 325 BC. Like other Oscan-Umbrian populations, they were governed by supreme magistrates known as meddices (singular meddix ). Their religion included deities, such as the Dioscuri , Cerfum (a water god), and Anaceta (the Roman Angitia ), a goddess associated with snakes. On the submission of the Samnites , they all came into alliance with Rome in 305–302 BC,

900-607: The ancient city indicate the existence of a considerable town; among them are the vestiges of an amphitheatre , a theatre, and thermae, all of them located outside the gates of the modern city. About 3 km (1.9 mi) from the city, at the foot of Monte Morrone is the site of the Roman sanctuary of Hercules Curinus . Nearby is the Badia Morronese , a large ( c. 119 by 140 metres [390 ft × 459 ft]) religious complex located near Pope Celestine V 's hermitage. It

950-525: The antiquities of his native district rescued every single Paelignian monument that we possess. None of the Latin inscriptions of the district need be older than Sulla , but some of them both in language and script show the style of his period (e.g. 3087, 3137); and, on the other hand, as several of the native inscriptions, which are all in the Latin alphabet, show the normal letters of the Ciceronian period, there

1000-450: The care bestowed on the irrigation of the vineyards. Traditionally, the beginning of the Christian age in Sulmona is set in the 3rd century. The city was part of the diocese of Valva , while a Sulmonese bishop is known from the 5th century. One of the earliest bishops was Saint Pamphilus (San Panfilo), an Italian pagan convert to Christianity in the 7th century from nearby Corfinium . He

1050-516: The coming of World War I , when the publication was suppressed under the Espionage Act . Tresca joined the revolutionary syndicalist Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in 1912, when he was invited by the union to Lawrence, Massachusetts , to help mobilize the Italian workers during a campaign to free strike leaders Joseph Ettor and Arturo Giovannitti , jailed on false murder charges. After

SECTION 20

#1732848110798

1100-710: The dialect spoken by these tribes was substantially the same from the northern boundary of the Frentani to some place in the upper Aternus valley not far from Amiternum , and that this dialect closely resembled the Oscan of Lucania and Samnium , though presenting some peculiarities of its own, which warrant, perhaps, the use of the name North Oscan. The clearest of these is the use of postpositions, as in Vestine Poimunie-n , " in templo Pomonali "; pritrom-e , i.e. in proximum , "on to what lies before you". Others are

1150-474: The difference that it has no vowel before the suffix suggests that it may rather be parallel with the suffix of Latin privignus . If it has any connection with Latin paelex , "concubine", it is conceivable that it meant “halfbreeds” and was a name coined in contempt by the conquering Sabines, who turned the touta marouca into the community of the Marrucini . But, when unsupported by direct evidence, even

1200-527: The editor of Il Germe, a socialist weekly based in Abruzzo. Seeking to avoid a jail term for his radical political activities, Tresca emigrated to the United States in 1904, settling in Philadelphia . Tresca had a relationship with Elizabeth Gurley Flynn , and Flynn's sister, Bina, and was the father of Bina's son Peter D. Martin . He also had a relationship with sculptor Minna Harkavy , whose bust of him

1250-695: The hills. One such escapee was the South African author, Uys Krige , who described his experience in a book titled The way out. There were two other smaller camps nearby, Fontana d'Amore , which held British officers, and Villa Orsini , which held very senior Allied officers captured during World War II, including Air Marshal Owen Tudor Boyd , Major-General Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart , Brigadier James Hargest , Lieutenant General Sir Philip Neame , General Sir Richard Nugent O'Connor . All were subsequently transferred to Castello di Vincigliata Campo PG12 near Florence. Sights in Sulmona include: The remains of

1300-526: The last century BC: Eite uus pritrome pacris, puus ecic lexe lifar , Latin : ite vos porro pacati (cum bona pace), qui hoc scriptum [hbar, 3rd declination neut.] legistis. The form lexe (2nd plural perfect indicative) is closely parallel to the inflection of the same person in Sanskrit and of quite unique linguistic interest. The name Paeligni may belong to the NO-class of ethnica (see Marrucini ), but

1350-453: The last with the other two forms shows that the -d was an archaism still occasionally used in writing. The last sentence of the interesting epitaph from which this phrase is taken may be quoted as a specimen of the dialect; the stone was found in Corfinio , the ancient Corfinium, and the very perfect style of the Latin alphabet in which it is written shows that it cannot well be earlier than

1400-453: The march of feet and the crew of some ship would come marching into the room. We found out subsequently that Tresca, who had organised them, was generally supposed to be an anarchist! Of course, there were extremely severe penalties under American law for behaviour of this kind." In August 1923, Tresca was arrested on charges of having printed an advertisement for a birth control pamphlet in his new publication, Il Martello (The Hammer). He

1450-468: The most famous of which is Confetti Mario Pelino . Sulmona is twinned with: The city had a football team, Pro Sulmona Calcio 1921 . The club is currently disbanded, last competing in the 2015–16 season in the Promozione Abruzzo , the seventh division of Italian football. Sulmona is served by the Sulmona railway station , an important station located at the intersection of three railway lines:

1500-454: The most tempting etymology is an unsafe guide. Paelignian and this group of inscriptions generally form the most important link in the chain of the Italic dialects, as without them the transition from Oscan to Umbrian would be completely lost. The unique collection of inscriptions and antiquities of Pentima and the museum at Sulmona were both created by Professor Antonio de Nino, whose devotion to

1550-584: The mountain country remained appears from the choice of the mountain fortress of Corfinium as the rebel capital. It was renamed Vitellio, the Oscan form of Italia , a name which appears, written in Oscan alphabet, on the coins struck there in 90 BC. The Paeligni were granted Roman citizenship after the Social War, and that was the beginning of the end of their national identity, as they began to adopt Roman culture and language. The known Paeligni inscriptions show that

Sulmona - Misplaced Pages Continue

1600-523: The myths that undergirded Mussolini's power. Tresca was monitored by the United States Department of Justice , who sought to deport him, and by Rome, where Mussolini feared that Italian-Americans would hurt his reputation with the United States and its banks. With pressure from the Italian ambassador to ban Tresca's newspaper, the American government charged Tresca with publishing obscenities. Tresca

1650-510: The numerous permanent streams of clear water in which its neighbourhood abounded. But, like the whole district of the Paeligni, it was extremely cold in winter, whence Ovid himself, and Silius Italicus in imitation of him, calls it "gelidus Sulmo" Its territory was fertile, cultivation of both in grain and wine are common, and one district, the Pagus Fabianus, is particularly mentioned by Pliny for

1700-517: The officers and the men were indifferent. Accommodation was overcrowded. Normal rations of rice soup and bread were occasionally augmented by fresh fruit and cheese in the summer. Some food parcels from the International Committee of the Red Cross were distributed occasionally. For recreation, the prisoners laid out a football field, and they also had equipment for cricket and basketball. There

1750-405: The sibilation of consonantal i and the assibilation of -di- to some sound like that of English j (denoted by l- in the local variety of Latin alphabet), as in vidadu , " viamdö ," i.e. " ad-viam "; Musesa = Lat. Mussedia ; and the loss of d (in pronunciation) in the ablative, as in aetatu firata fertlid (i.e. aetate fertili finita ), where the contrast of

1800-400: The son of a landowner. His formal education reached to secondary school . Tresca had no hope of attending university as his family's finances were poor during the economic slump of the 1880s . He enrolled at a seminary instead, but left soon after, emerging as an anticlerical atheist . From 1898 to 1902, Tresca was secretary of the Italian Federation of Railroad Workers. He was also

1850-472: The status of a colony, probably in the time of Augustus ; though Pliny does not give it the title of a Colonia. Inscriptions, as well as the geographers and Itineraries, attest its continued existence as a municipal town throughout the Roman Empire . The chief claim to fame of Sulmona is derived from its having been the birthplace of Ovid, who repeatedly alludes to it as such, and celebrates its salubrity, and

1900-603: The time was that the suspected assassin was a member of the Mafia , acting on orders from Sicily , while other theories suggested that he was murdered by Italian fascists . Others have theorized that Tresca was eliminated by the NKVD as retribution for criticism of the Stalin regime of the Soviet Union . Vito Genovese , boss of the Genovese crime family , is said to have allegedly ordered

1950-516: The trial of Sacco and Vanzetti , Tresca organized publicity, fundraising, and the defense lawyer Fred Moore . In the 1930s, Tresca became an outspoken opponent of Soviet communism and Stalinism , particularly after the Soviet Union had engineered the destruction of the anarchist movement in Catalonia and Aragon during the Spanish Revolution of 1936 . In 1937, Tresca was a member of

2000-616: The victorious strike in Lawrence, Tresca was active in several strikes across the United States; the Little Falls, New York, textile workers' strike (1912) , the New York City hotel workers' strike (1913), the Paterson silk strike (1913), and the Mesabi Range , Minnesota , miners' strike (1916). He was arrested several times and jailed for nine months awaiting trial for murder in conjunction with

2050-526: Was a theatre, a small lending library, at least one band, and a newspaper produced by a group of prisoners. In September 1943, as the Italian government neared collapse, the inmates of Sulmona heard rumours that the evacuation of the camp was imminent. They awoke one morning to discover that their guards had deserted them. On 14 September, German troops arrived to escort the prisoners northwards, to captivity in Germany, but not before hundreds of them had escaped into

Sulmona - Misplaced Pages Continue

2100-641: Was destroyed by the earthquake, some remarkable buildings survive such as the Church of Santa Maria della Tomba, the Palazzo Annunziata, the Aqueduct and the Gothic portal on Corso Ovidio. Much of the city was then rebuilt in the prevailing elegant Baroque style of the 18th century. Sulmona experienced an economic boom in the late 19th century, becoming a railway hub given its strategic geographic position between Rome and

2150-458: Was elected bishop of Valva in 682 and died in 706. He is the patron saint of Sulmona and is buried in the church dedicated to him, the present Sulmona Cathedral . Sulmona became a free commune under the Normans , within the Kingdom of Sicily . Under Frederick II an aqueduct was built in the town, one of the most important constructions of the era in the Abruzzo; the emperor made it the capital of

2200-893: Was erected in his birth town of Sulmona. In America, Tresca was elected Secretary of the Italian Socialist Federation of North America in 1904. He remained in that position for the next three years. During this same interval, Tresca was also the editor of Il Proletario (The Proletarian), the official newspaper of the Italian Socialist Federation. Tresca's political views became increasingly radical and he soon came to identify himself as an anarchist . In 1907 Tresca resigned as editor of Il Proletario and began publishing his own newspaper, La Plebe (The Plebeian). He would later transfer La Plebe to Pittsburgh and, with it, revolutionary ideas to Italian miners and mill workers in Western Pennsylvania . In 1909, Tresca became editor of L'Avvenire, (The Future) remaining in that capacity until

2250-537: Was found guilty in an October 1923 trial and was sentenced to a year and a day in Atlanta Federal Penitentiary . This sentence was confirmed on November 10, 1924, and Tresca entered prison on January 5, 1925. Tresca became a prominent figure among Italian-Americans for his opposition to fascism and was reported to Benito Mussolini as a leading enemy of the fascist movement. Tresca edited an anti-fascist newspaper named Il Martello , where he attacked

2300-518: Was founded by Celestine as a chapel in 1241, and was enlarged and later made into a convent. Sulmona is the home of the Italian confectionery known as confetti . These are sugar-coated almonds and are traditionally given to friends and relatives on weddings and other special occasions. Confetti can be eaten or simply used as decoration. The local artisans also colour these candies and craft them into flowers and other creations. There are two main factories in town and several shops that sell these items,

2350-458: Was leaving his parole officer's offices when he dodged surveilling officers by jumping into a car that was waiting for him. Two hours later, Tresca was crossing Fifth Avenue at 15th Street on foot when a black Ford pulled up beside him. A short, squat gunman in a brown coat jumped out and shot Tresca in the back of the head with a handgun, killing him instantly. The black Ford was later found abandoned nearby with all four doors open. One theory at

2400-459: Was ravaged by Hannibal in 211 BC, who, however, did not attack the city itself. Its name is not noticed during the Social War , in which the Paeligni took so prominent a part; but according to Florus , it suffered severely in the subsequent civil war between Sulla and Gaius Marius , having been destroyed by the former as a punishment for allegiance to his rival. The writings of that rhetorical writer are not, however, to be taken literally, and it

2450-528: Was sentenced and subject to deportation, but public dissent led the United States President Calvin Coolidge to commute Tresca's sentence. The fascists turned to violence, with a bombing assassination attempt in 1926, after which the antifascists fought back. Tresca contributed towards stopping Mussolini's ideological spread among Italian-Americans, despite Tresca's lack of reach into Italian-American media and business influence. During

2500-517: Was undertaken as a protest in New York against the British arrest of Dr. Mannix in August 1920. This latter picketing was largely the work of an Italian called Carlo Tresca, a personal friend of the well-known Irish-American family of Flynn, who were great friends of James Connolly. Tresca had great influence among the sea-faring fraternity and suggested that we should call out the seamen from the British ships as

#797202