Agnone emigrants in the world Agnone emigrants in the world|
1753 |
Church Holdings Comparison |
A comparison of church holding in the 1753 "Onciario" with those listed in an 1815 cadastre shows a marked decline in land ownership... |
|
1786 |
Abbot Longano |
The
abbot Longano journeyed through the Molise in 1786 and confirmed
Galanti's dismal portrayal of the area. Longano notes that robbery,
homicide, and mendicity were all increasing sharply and that some
families were resettling in Naples to escape what was tantamount to a
life of servitude under the barons. The situation of the poor
people was deteriorating rapidly owing to runaway inflation. The
peasants generally lacked ownership of the land and were prey to
short-term lease arrangements. Because they could be
easily evicted they possessed little leverage in their dealings with
the owners. Given their fragile tenureship they were unwilling
to make substantial capital investments, which in turn perpetuated
poor yields. The circle of debt in which the contadino found
himself could easily lead to bankruptcy, during which even his hand
tools were seized and sold to satisfy his obligations. |
|
1805 & 1808 |
Agnone Clergy |
Parish finances in desperate straits |
|
1806 |
Feudalism |
Is abolished |
|
1807 |
Agnone |
All
monasteries and convents not used for teaching purposes were closed. |
|
1809 |
|
In 1809 there was an unsuccessful attempt to convert Agnone’s Celestine monastery into a diocesan seminary. Shortly thereafter, the physical plant collapsed into ruins. |
|
1809 |
Bishops of Trivente |
noted that his bishopric was impoverished owing to recent civil legislation e laws prevented town councils from appropriating municipal funds to pay the customary tithes to the diocese. Civil marriage had also been instituted, thereby depriving the church of another of its former sources of revenue. |
|
1810 |
Murat |
Issued a decree in Naples establishing an agricultural society in each province, and within two years one was functioning in the Molise. |
|
1811 |
|
The mense, or parish funds, of Agnone’s seven parishes collected a total of only 182 ducats, 30 grane, an amount insufficient to cover their expenses. By the end of the decade the physical plant of San Marco had all but collapsed. Its organ had been transferred to the ex-monastery of San Francesco. The altars, choir loft, and art objects were removed to other churches in Agnone and throughout the diocese. San Marco’s bell had been commandeered by the government (probably for its scrap-metal value). |
|
1812 |
Clergy of Agnone |
as a body, petitioned the local administrations unsuccessfully for payment of certain tithes that had been in arrears since 1805 and 1808, respectively |
|
1815 |
Poor
Harvest |
In 1815 the harvest was poor. Bread prices more than doubled, and interest rates soared to 40 percent. Agnone's poor were reduced to eating boiled grass and became so weakened that many died of fever. |
|
1816 |
Troops |
In 1816 troops had to be sent to the town to restore public order after an abortive attempt of the millers to alter the traditional weights and measures in their favor. . . . |
|
1816 |
Baron |
Viewed from the perspective of Agnone, in 1816 (ten years after the abolition of feudalism) the heirs of the baron Gigliani still owned 4,011 tomoli of land, or fully 15 percent of the total land base of the municipality |
|
1816 |
|
The possidente (landowner) Camillo Cocucci acquired thirteen parcels belonging to the Convent of Santa Chiara, while Nicola Cocucci bought thirty-eight parcels, two houses, and a house site. |
|
1817 |
Agnone’s Peasants |
.
. .According to one early-nineteenth-century (circa 1817) account,
Agnone's peasants could no longer afford to eat wheat bread and had to
substitute cornmeal in its stead. Their wine consumption was
reserved for festive occasions and for the hardest work periods of the
year. Salt pork was their only meat, and few had more than a
single change of clothing. It further notes that "at one
time all of the peasants cooked their vegetable minestra in a small
copper vessel. . .but at present the majority are not privy to such an
aid and substitute for the copper vessel a clay pot." This
is a particularly graphic indicator of rural poverty in a town that
housed one of south Italy's most flourishing copper industries. |
|
1817 |
Celestine Monastary |
In 1817 he rented, for a period of six years, the lands pertaining to the former Celestine monastery |
|
1820 |
|
There
were constant efforts to place taxes on basic necessities, hence
exacerbating the already precarious circumstances of the poor. |
|
1821 |
An electoral list |
provides a measure of the extent of the liberals’ control over municipal affairs |
|
1834 |
Cantalupo |
A report by Cantalupo, authored in 1834, notes that two-thirds of the peasants in the Molise were landless. . . |
|
1835 |
San Nicola |
was in a lamentable state of disrepair. The parish priest petitioned the intendente for assistance because the parish’s patrimony was so reduced that it produced less than four ducats annually. . . . |
|
1844 |
Nicola de Luca, describing the situation |
Since
the abolition of feudalism the majority of peasant holdings had passed
into the hands of the galantuomini.
Referring
to the contadino, de Luca writes, Everything sold, he is covered with rags, he nourishes himself with acorns roasted on a fire, with roots and grasses, and in the dreariness of winter in swarms he presents himself in the public piazzas extending his honorable hand in order not to die of hunger. . . .He who actually cultivates the soil in the Molise does not own even his hoe. |
Between 1846 and 1860, this peasant
and his married son fathered twelve infants, all of whom died within two years
of birth. . . .
. . .once the critical childhood
years were traversed, the peasants enjoyed a somewhat higher life expectance.
Thus the mean age at death for peasant males in the sample was 49.19; for
peasant women, 48.42 years.
The denigration of the contadini by the other Agnonesi is blatant.
Peasants are ignored, ridiculed, or
patronized, depending on the situation. When the nonpeasant Agnonese
enters the peasant's realm, it is more as a superior intruder or visitor than as
a fellow citizen.
There is a furtiveness and deference
in the contadino's dealings with others. He is distinguished as much by
his uneasiness as by the cut of his clothes, his speech, his etched physical
features and gnarled hands. He waits in line patiently as others are
served before him. He never frequents the town's bars, preferring
the more rustic cantine that specialize in the peasant trade. He does not
join voluntary associations; if he subscribes to a political party, he assumes a
passive role. He is particularly deferential and ill at ease when dealing
with officials. His children receive less attention in the schools and
have less chance of advancement and less of a future if they conclude their
education.
Even contacts with the supernatural
are class particular. Although the agro of Agnone is divided among
the seven parish churches, the parish priests, with one exception, rarely visit
the peasants, preferring to deal with them exclusively within the confines of
the cittadina. When a priest is seen in the agro the common question is
Who is dying? Not surprisingly, the peasantry constitutes a strong
repository of folk religious beliefs.
The
Galantuomini
...the powerful aristocracy and traditionalist clergy remained royalist
and in support of the Bourbon king. The emerging middle-class bourgeoisie,
with allies in a segment of the clergy, seized upon the French invasion as an
opportunity to overturn the old social order. The reaction of the
contadini is more difficult to fathom; the peasants sided with the aristocracy
in support of the king.
...again, the peasants organized,
seized control of particular towns, and committed many atrocities against the
Jacobins.
. . .Subsequent events were to
confirm the peasants' suspicions, for the liberal sought to translate their
victory into an elite social status. Designated by the newly
coined term galantuomini ("gallant men"), they effectively replaced
the baroni at the apex of the social pyramid.
It may also be argued that, by the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
century, the middle class was a greater symbol of exploitation to the peasantry
than was the aristocracy. In the later years of the feudal period, the
power of the università vis-à-vis the nobles had increased steadily, and
control of the università was usually in the hands of a limited circle of local
businessmen, professionals, and petty gentry.
To the peasant, the local merchants,
administrators, moneylenders, and commodities speculators were more visibly the
cause of his misery than were the absentee barons. This was particularly
the case given that feudal obligations such as tithes remained fixed, whereas
the rampant economic inflation of the eighteenth century made renewable
mortgages and contracts all the more onerous.
A perennial raw issue between the
liberals and the peasantry was the question of land reform. The abolition
of feudalism, with the prospect of the dismemberment of the feudal estates,
sparked a strong strain of hope among the land-starved peasants.
Their disillusionment turned to fury, as the promised land reform became a
usurpation by the galantuomini. The middle class possessed the capital to
purchase lands as they became available on the open market. . . .
The galantuomini, because they were
in control of municipal government, were in a position to manipulate these
resources or steal them outright. . . .
Population pressure, inadequate agricultural yields, lack of capital, foreclosures, usury, price increases through commodities speculation, consumer taxes, and natural disasters all conspired to harsher the life circumstances of Agnone's lower classes. . .
The
Emigrants
. . .In 1884 the local newspaper L'Aquilonia reviewed the causes of
emigration of peasants from Agnone and concluded that the two main factors were
excessive taxes on consumers' goods and usurious interest rates that at times
surpassed 20 percent in the town. . . .
. . .The peasant was a shadowy
figure in the pages of Agnone's newspapers. When he is mentioned at
all, it is usually either as a social problem or as the victim of natural
disaster. From such articles it is possible to catch a brief glimpse of a
world characterized by considerable violence and tragedy. Robbery,
homicide, assaults, and infanticides were not unusual for rural Agnone. On
occasion, peasants were arrested for stealing the crops of the galantuomini, and
a particularly frequent crime was the illegal cutting of timber on the town
commons.
In 1863, for example, the authorities actually prosecuted 624 cases of
illegal felling of trees, many of which involved several defendants.
Consequently, when by the 1870s,
owing to improvements in sea travel, a lowering of fares, and the expansive
nature of the economies of both the United States and the Rio de la Plata region
of southern South America, transatlantic emigration became a viable alternative,
the lower classes of Agnone were, out of a sense of desperation, prime
candidates.
Politically alienated by decades of
unfulfilled promises of land reform, mired in endemic poverty, dependent on a
rapacious class of galatuomini for what was, by any yardstick, a meager
existence, the peasantry was further squeezed by relentless population increase
throughout the first seven decades of the nineteenth century.
For Agnone's contadino, then, the
act of emigration, even though to an uncertain destination and destiny, could
scarcely be regarded as extravagant risk taking. By concentrating
its efforts, a peasant family, sometimes seeking aid from its extended kin
network, pooled its resources to provide one or two of its young adult male
members with passage.
The whole process was quickly
facilitated by agents and agencies, some operating for private gain and others
commissioned by the Argentine government, who recruited emigrants with the
promise of loans and other forms of assistance. For Agnone's poor,
emigration held at least the prospect of escape from misery.
Emigration, then, was a tremendously
complex social question. In the main, its driving force was youthful imagination
fueled by the success stories of a few. For many a person, unbridled enthusiasm
and energy seemed more than a match for any adversity, and so they departed in
droves, and their departures touched upon practically every aspect of life in
communities like Agnone.
Families were deprived of members,
fields of their tillers, workshops of their artisans, patrons of their clients,
priests of their parishioners, towns of their taxpayers. Consequently, the
merits and demerits of emigration were debated incessantly.
Gamberale, in a public discourse
delivered in Agnone in 1902, phrased the question eloquently: Some say
that emigration is the cause [of the town's decline]. Possibly so, at least in
part. But consider that emigration, clearly the cause of many ills, is
itself an effect.
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