Five centuries ago, on December 13, 1521, in Le Grotte, now Grottammare, a charming town on the Adriatic coast in the Marche region, was born the tough pope: Sixtus V, whose original name was Felice Peretti. The great Roman dialect poet Giuseppe Gioachino Belli (1791–1863) celebrates him in one of his gracious sonnets: Among all…
Five hundred years ago, on the night of December 1, 1521, a few days before his forty-sixth birthday, a great pope of the so-called Renaissance died: Leo X, whose original name was Giovanni de’ Medici. The second son of Lorenzo the Magnificent was born in Florence on December 11, 1475 in the most important of…
It is necessary “to snatch the Rosaries from the hands of the old ladies!” How can we forget this declaration from Cardinal Michele Pellegrino (1903-1986), Archbishop of Turin between 1965 and 1977, to his clergy and often heard during the Roman youth of this article’s author? It comes to mind especially in the month of…
One hundred years ago today, the city of Palestrina inaugurated the monument dedicated to the greatest son of this ancient town located 23 miles east-southeast of Rome, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, the “Prince of Music” born here in 1525. It is the fine statue by the Florentine sculptor Arnaldo Zocchi (1862-1940) which stands in the…
Editor’s note: please see Mediatrix Press for The Bellarmine Translation Project. Today four centuries have passed since the death, at almost 79 years of age, of St. Robert Bellarmine. A memorial tablet on his birthplace praises him as “the glory of the Church, of Italy, of his native place, for the sanctity of life and…
It is the seventh century since, at the age of 56, on the night of the 13th of September 1321, the brightest star of Italian literature died in his exile at Ravenna: Dante Alighieri. The father of the Italian language was born in Florence into a minor noble family and had grown up around the…
This year marks a special year dedicated to the “Preacher of Grace,” which began with the Epiphany 2021 and will end on January 6, 2022. It marks eight centuries from the dies natalis, the day of heavenly birth of Saint Dominic de Guzmán (Caleruega, Spain 1170 – Bologna, Italy, August 6, 1221), the Founder of…
They called him princeps musicorum, prince of musicians, and 500 years ago tomorrow, on August 27, 1521, he passed away in Condé-sur-l’Escaut, nowadays Northern France, where the last seventeen years of his life he was provost of the collegiate of Notre Dame, destroyed in 1793 during “the frightening revolution unleashed in France” (Pius X, Duplicem…
One hundred years ago, at the age of forty-eight, the tenor par excellence died in Naples: Enrico Caruso. He was born on February 27, 1873, in a large family and he enjoyed singing from childhood. Thanks to the Rev. Giuseppe Bronzetti, pastor of the Church of Sant’Anna delle Paludi, he made his first vocal appearances…
590 years ago, on May 30, 1431, a young French saint died at the age of 19, The Maid of Orleans, that is, virgin, as she is called by all and Friedrich Schiller in his homonyms drama of 1801: Joan of Arc. Matching her with St Catherine of Siena, Benedict XVI defines both “two young…
Two hundred years ago, “by the tidings, in amaze / the earth is held, and with her gaze / the parting hour doth mutely scan / of this great spirit,” as we read in Alessandro Manzoni’s The Fifth of May. In fact, on May 5, 1821, Napoleon Bonaparte died in Saint Helena, a British island…
