Peter CostelloIreland – Italy: Culture and values
J. Anthony Gaughan
Sicilian-born Enzo Farinella is a journalist who has reported on Ireland for his fellow Italians for more than 40 years. He was Cultural Attaché in the Italian Cultural Institute from 1979 to 1999 and since then has been Director of the Casa Italia Cultural Centre, from where he publishes annuals on Irish-
Italian relations.
These annuals and his other writings attest to his charism in interpreting the Irish to the Italians and the Italians to the Irish.
In this his fifth bi-lingual annual he takes the long view on the relations between the two peoples. Thus he describes the cultural values shared by them as beginning with the advent of Christianity from Italy in Patrician times. Later Irish monks, following the collapse of the Roman Empire, were to re-kindle Christianity and the civilisation and learning associated with it across Western Europe from the 6th Century onwards.
In this regard Farinella singles out St Columbanus. While most of his missionary endeavours were conducted in present-day France, he made his most important foundation at Bobbio in the north of Italy. After St Columbanus’ death in 615 this was a seminal centre for the transmission of Christian learning and the preservation of the classical writings of Greece and Rome.
Vestiges of this missionary activity of the Irish monks are to be found in Italy today. St Brigid is the Patron Saint of Fiesole, near Florence, and a church in Piacenza is dedicated to her. St Fredian, another Irish saint, was the Bishop of Lucca in Tuscany, where a church is dedicated to him. Then there is St Cataldus who is venerated in a number of places in Italy.
The influence of Italy on Ireland has been for the most part in the realm of the arts. Following a visit to the homeland of Dante in 1741, the Earl of Charlemont, one of the leading members of the Irish Parliament and first president of the Royal Irish Academy, had a life-long passion for Italian literature.
Many of Dublin’s town houses were enhanced in the 18th and 19th Centuries by the artistry of Italian ornamental experts.
The singers John McCormack and Margaret Burke Sheridan were trained in Italy and performed in the country’s opera houses. Famously the latter refused to sing in Naples in a protest at the death of Terence McSweeney, Lord Mayor of Cork, after his long hunger strike. Joyce was at his most creative during his sojourn in Trieste (though strictly that was actually a city of the Austro-Hungarian Empire).
Farinella has been at the forefront in promoting closer and more friendly relations between Ireland and Italy. To this end he has been involved in the twinning of Irish and Italian towns. To date 16 of these twinnings have been completed and he lists some of these with accompanying profiles of the various towns.
Throughout, the author avails of every opportunity to draw attention to the Christian roots of the European and Western culture shared by Ireland and Italy and warns that if European leaders continue to ignore this crucial aspect of the European project it will become a mere commercial enterprise without a soul.
In the light of recent developments this is a warning to which all European citizens could well pay heed.