What Italy Has Given the World

Adapted from a lecture to the Italian Club at St. John's University

By Prof. Gaetano Cipolla

The world is so interconnected, especially today, that boundaries are beginning to disappear and chauvinism has little place in it. Great men and great events are not the property of any given nation: they belong to the world. At any rate, in order to show what Italy has contributed to the world, I imagined that someone, traveling back in time, did something that accidentally changed the course of history and the Italian peninsula never surfaced from the bottom of the Mediterranean sea, as it actually did some two and a half billion years ago. The location where we are accustomed to seeing the familiar boot-like shape of Italy kicking Sicily was no longer there, nor was Sardinia there, nor Capri. Nothing at all! Italy, in this frightening scenario, has never existed and, obviously, no trace of anything that Italians had done remained.

What would the world be like, today, if Italy never existed?

For one thing, I would not be here asking you to consider this idea. For another, most of you, at least those of you who are of Italian descent, would not be here listening to me.

Without Italy and Italians, there would be no Rome, no "caput mundi." The world would be missing its head. Without Rome, where would all roads lead to?

There'd be no Venice, the Queen of the Adriatic, that ruled the sea for so long and married it as a sign of perpetual domination. No Marco Polo, Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice would be homeless as would be Othello. In fact, Shakespeare would have had to rewrite his plays, for a great number of them are derived from old, popular Italian novellas. 

There'd be no Naples. Contemplate for a moment the world without pizza, Neapolitan music, San Gennaro, Benedetto Croce, Toto`, Sophia Loren, or Professor Perfetti!

There'd be no Leonardo da Vinci and no Mona Lisa. What a loss that would have been to mankind! Leonardo, the man who was probably the most gifted human ever born, would not be part of our history. In everything he touched, he advanced knowledge and science immeasurably. His inventions are an amazing testimonial of his genius: weapons of war, flying machines, tanks, steam-powered cannons, submarines, helicopters, transmissions. He invented the jack for the car before there was a car; shoes to walk on water; parachutes. Bombs that look like those dropped in world war II; anatomical studies of the human body so perfect they were used by doctors until the 19th century. In his notes, which are difficult to read because they were written with his left hand, he wrote two hundred years before Galileo, "In your studies you must try to prove that the earth revolves around the sun." A revolutionary statement, which would surely have cost him a lot if discovered.

We would not know what "chiaroscuro" means in art, or "sfumato." Our paintings would be flat because we would not know how to make them look three dimensional by using the principles of "perspective" worked out mathematically by Leon Battista Alberti and the painters of the early Renaissance.

There'd be no Renaissance. And while I am on this subject, it has always puzzled me why in America we call it Renaissance instead of Rinascita or Rinascimento. Another Italian invention we pronounce in French is Ballet. The French, I readily concede, have been better at public relations than Italians.

Without Italy there would be no violins, no pianos, no cellos; that would not be so tragic if those were all Italians contributed to music. The fact is that there'd be no music without Italians. It was an Italian, a monk named Guido D'Arezzo, who invented, in the 11th century, a way of writing music so that people could read it off a sheet of paper. To understand his contributions, try to imagine that the written word did not exist. The written word made possible to the writing of history, the accumulation of facts on paper rather than on people's memories. Guido d'Arezzo made it possible to transcribe notes on a four line graph, which later became the pentagram, the revolutionizing music. He also invented the notes Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Si, by using the first letters of a religious hymn by Paolo Diacono, another Italian.

In addition, musicians know how to play a piece by notations written in Italian. This came about when Italians, who held the monopoly for printing sheet music during the Renaissance, added such notations as: "Allegro, Appassionato, Andante, Veloce," etc... to indicate the tempo of the music.

And while I am talking about printing. Everyone knows that it was a German who invented the printing press. It was, however, Italians who perfected the instrument and created a revolution by making books available to everyone and more affordable. You may have heard of Aldus Manutius, a Venetian printer who introduced a type of script that was more readable than the German script employed by Gutemberg. That type survives today in the word "Italics," to describe the slanted type and "Roman" for the regular type. Those of you who are into the desktop publishing will know a company named Aldus that makes a typesetting program called PageMaker. The company was named after Aldus Manutius and his Aldine Press.

Without Italians there would no Palestrina, no Vivaldi, no opera, no Monteverdi, no Rossini, no Verdi, no Rigoletto, no Madama Butterfly, no Cavalleria Rusticana, no Pagliacci. Without Italy, we would not know the virtuosity of a Paganini, the musical genius of a Toscanini, the wonderful voice of a Caruso, or the heavenly notes sung by a "castrato."

Some of you who do not yet appreciate opera may be tempted to say that it is no big loss. But to the rest of us that would be a very big loss indeed. Imagine the world without Italian music! The magical moments that our great composers have created that transport you to a different world for an hour would be gone. Imagine Butterfly not embracing her son for the last time before committing suicide and the scream of Pinkerton, that coward, who comes in too late: "Butterfly, Butterfly, Butterfly." And your heart is about to break while the closing notes rage with despair and anger. Imagine the sadness of the clown in Pagliacci who has just discovered that his wife is betraying him and yet must get dressed to go on stage. The play must go on, after all. Or imagine for the moment when Rigoletto cries out "Ah, la maledizione." As he embraces the dead body of his daughter and the curtain falls.

I do not know of any other medium that can so move an audience as opera. While many other countries are famous for their musical genius - Germany, for example, has made wonderful contributions to opera and classical music - Italian music has a special quality. Thomas Pynchon in his novel Gravity's Rainbow said, "the point...is that a person feels good listening to Rossini. All you feel like, listening to Beethoven, is going out and invading Poland." And it does feel good, even when it makes you sad.

Without Italy there would be no spaghetti westerns, spaghetti alla carbonara, bucatini all'amatriciana, gnocchi, ravioli, cannoli, all those good things that make up the Mediterranean diet that the world is finally recognizing as the best and healthiest diet. Surely the world would survive without spaghetti, or would it? But would it survive as well without ice cream? It was a Sicilian named Procopio who opened up the first ice-cream parlor in Paris in the 17th century. His establishment is still there. It's called "Le Procope."

There'd be no tomato sauce, - and what a terrible loss that would be for the Italian food industry! - although without America there would have been no tomatoes in Italy. Tomatoes, corn, tobacco, among other things, were brought back into Europe after the discovery of America. That shows you that civilization is not a one-way street, although in the case of Italy and the world, the road leaving Italy in the direction of other countries has been far more heavily traveled than the one in the opposite direction.

Without Italy and Italians, America would not exist as we know it. Surely the continent would have been discovered sooner or later, but it would not be named America, after Amerigo Vespucci, nor would there be a Venezuela, (it means "little Venice") or a Columbia. Canada would not speak English. In this country, seventeen cities named Columbuses would disappear, so would 23 Florences, 15 Milans, 12 Genoas, 18 Venices and the thousand or so other cities named after Italians and Romans. No more Syracuse, NY; Naples, Florida; Giotto, W. WA.; or Dante, or S. Dak.

Without Italians there'd be no Verrazzano Bridge. Well, the bridge would probably be there but they would have named it after JFK, as in fact they tried, almost missing the opportunity to name something after the man who gave this land its first European name: Giovanni da Verrazzano, who surveyed the coast of the United States from Virginia to Cape Cod, gave Italian or French names to all the sights he saw. He named New York Bay the Bay of St. Marguerite; Long Island was named Isola Louise; Cape Code was Capo Pallavicino. For him, America was "Francesca," after Francois 1st for whom he sailed. If history had been different, you would have been known as Franciscans instead of Americans; either way, however, both would have been connected with Italians.

Without Italians we would not be acquainted with "letters of credit" or "check." Come to think of it, the word "bank" would probably mean only the shore of a river instead of a place where money is deposited or withdrawn from. The first "bankers" set up shop on the streets of Florence and Siena sitting behind a "banco" (bench or table). From such a lowly beginning, Tuscan banking institutions grew to have offices throughout Europe from which they financed many British and French kings. Monte dei Paschi di Siena, founded in the Middle Ages, is the most ancient banking institution in the world.

Another institution that found Italian soil conducive to growth and expansion was the university. But Italian universities were special institutions that were independent from ecclesiastical control. They were autonomous centers of learning, interested in studying humanity, letters, law, and medicine, not theology.

Without Italians we would be missing two months out of the calendar, July and August, named after Julius Caesar and Caesar Augustus. But more than that, we would have no calendar at all, for it was under Caesar and Augustus, 2000 years ago, that the twelve-month solar-based calendar was developed. It was changed slightly under pope Gregory XIII, another Italian, in the 16th century and it continues today unchanged.

Without Italy nearly half of all the English words you speak would be missing. While English is not considered a Romance language, it is fair to say that about half of the words in the English language are derived from Latin, the language of the Romans. For every Germanic root that exists in English, a Latin root can also be found. If something is readable, it's also "legible"; if something can be eaten, it's is also "edible"; if you can uproot a tree, you can "eradicate" a vice; if something can be carried, it is also "portable."

Without Italians we'd have to eat without a fork, but that's ok because we'd have poor manners anyway considering that the first books on how to be a gentleman and how to behave at court and at the table were written by Baldassare Castiglione and by G. Della Casa.

Without Italians there'd be no sonnet, no Cinderella, no Pinocchio, no Casanova, no Federico Fellini or Marcello Mastroianni. Without Italians the French would not have Napoleon Bonaparte, Caterina dei Medici, and their haute cuisine.

The Russians would not have part of their Kremlin, and St. Petersburg would be without its famous museum "The Ermitage," and Royal Palace. Spain would not have its Escorial. El Greco would have been El Griego and most of South America would not speak Spanish. The English would not have their beautiful gardens. The Americans would not have their Watergate; the Dome of the Capitol would not look like St. Peter's and the Apotheosis of Washington, painted on its ceiling by Costantino Brumidi, who was known as the Michelangelo of the Capitol, would not be there.

Without Italy the Germans would have no place to go for vacation.

It is not difficult to see the great influences that the Roman Empire had on the countries of Europe. Today, in Italy people drive on the same roads built by the Romans, drink water brought in by Roman aqueducts, are governed by laws codified by the great Roman Emperor Justinian. What is less known is that Britain was part of the Roman Empire for centuries. It was governed as a Roman province, and the effects of that experience did not disappear. It is present in English law. The so called "Common Law" of England, which supposedly is completely different from the legal system prevalent in Europe, is translated from the Roman "ius comune gentium" and can be shown to have been greatly influenced by Roman law. The greatest document of English law bears a Latin title "Magna Carta."

Many of the legal expressions used in the English-speaking countries are Latin. "Alibi" means "elsewhere," "de facto" means "from the fact." The influences of the Romans and of the Italians on the American political and legal systems are many and have been amply documented.

Without Italians we would not know what a Fallopian tube is or a Eustachian one. We would not have the barometer and would not be able to measure atmospheric pressure. We would not know much about the science of hydraulics. We would not know what a telescope was and would not have seen the Moons of Jupiter, nor know about the effects of gravity of falling weights or the principle of the pendulum, or that the earth revolves around the sun, all things connected with the founder of the modern scientific method, Galileo Galilei.

We would not know that blood circulates also through capillaries seen for the first time by Marcello Malpighi through his microscope. William Harvey, who discovered how blood circulates, studied in Italy under Fabricius of Acquapendente.

We would not know exactly which of our organs were malfunctioning if we felt an ache, if GB Morgagni had not made the connections between physical dysfunctions and the organs that are responsible for them. ("On the Seats of Causes of Diseases")

The sentence "the man was galvanized into action" would not mean anything without Luigi Galvani who discovered the role of electricity in bodies. We would not know what a volt or voltage are, if A. Volta had not constructed the first battery. You would not be driving your car without your favorite heavy metal music if Guglielmo Marconi had not invented the wireless radio.

And when you went home, the phone would never ring if Antonio Meucci had not invented the telettrophono twenty years before Bell. Unfortunately, his poverty and his lack of contacts cost him wealth and fame that he truly deserved. Exploitation of the atom would have been slower without E. Fermi.

The world owes Italy a tremendous debt of gratitude. I have not given you a systematic list of things that Italy has contributed to Western civilization. But beginning with the Romans and continuing with the Italians, there has been no country that has represented civilization to the degree that Italy does. Italy has given Europe its language and its character through the Roman laws and the Christian religion. After the Roman Empire collapsed in the V century AD, Christianity, which had become the state religion of Rome, was the unifying force that held Europe together until the Middle Ages.

Without Italians there'd be no mafia, no mano nera, no cosa nostra, no 'ndrangheta and no camorra. No doubt many of you are wondering, "when is he going to get to that part of the Italian contribution?" I delayed because I wanted you to hear what else Italians have done. The idea of Italians as criminals occupies a disproportionate place in the American perception of them and is definitely not based on facts. Italian criminals are indeed a very small percentage of Italians. No one in his right mind is going to suggest that Italians have a monopoly on greed, corruption, and hunger, on which many societies flourish. But we must take the good with the bad. Italy has had more than its share of Cagliostros and Borgias, of saints and scoundrels, of artists and charlatans. Mediocrity is not something that Italians cherish or admire.

In every human endeavor Italians have made their mark in an unmistakable manner.

In art: one Michelangelo alone would be enough glory for any country. In Italy he is one giant among many: Giotto, Simone Martini, Botticelli, Antonio da Messina, Masaccio, Tiziano, Raffaello, Caravaggio.

In architecture: If I mentioned the name of Palladio few of you would not be able to identify his work. He gave his name to a style that is pervasive in this country: Palladian. Thomas Jefferson loved the style as you can see in Monticello or at the University of Virginia campus. Palladio is one among many wonderful architects who enjoy a universal acclaim.

In pure mathematics, with Girolamo Cardano and Niccolo` Tartaglia; in chemistry, with A. Avogadro. In every other science, Italians have made outstanding contributions too. What kind of theater would exist without the Commedia dell'Arte? The influence of this form of improvisational comedy, perfected in the Renaissance, is incalculable. There would be no Punch and Judy, no Harlequin, no Pulcinella, no image of double-faced Janus laughing from one face and crying from the other. What would the theater be like today without the revolutionary work of Pirandello? Where would political science be without Machiavelli? What would poetry be like without Dante, Petrarca, Leopardi, Montale, Quasimodo? What stories would be told without Boccaccio, Ariosto, Tasso, or Verga?

In the field of design: "Made in Italy" today means made with style, made with class. From the Ferrari to the Lamborghini, from the Ferragamo shoes and pocketbooks, from the Gucci to the Pucci, from Valentino to the Bulgari, Italian is in.

And no doubt it will remain so because it's part of being creative. I think what Italy has given to the world is a thirst for living, an uncanny ability to do with what is available, and a wonderful resourcefulness that always finds the right solution to a problem. It is called creativity, and it's in the blood!