The ancient Greek temple of Athena in Paestum.

Κυριακή 18 Νοεμβρίου 2012

Oriamu pisulina - Ghetonia

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Italy rediscovers Greek heritage




By David Willey 
BBC correspondent in Rome
Terracotta vase from Magna Graecia, about 490BC
Hundreds of rare and beautiful pieces are on display
A world-class archaeological exhibition opened this week in Calabria, in the toe of Italy.
Its subject is Magna Graecia, or Greater Greece - the name given to parts of southern Italy colonised by the ancient Greeks 2,500 years ago.
The migrations of modern Europe are nothing new.
But for the ancient Greeks, southern Italy was their America.
Long before the Roman empire flourished, they sailed west in search of new lands.
They settled around the hospitable coastline of Calabria and Sicily, dominating local tribes, building huge temples to their gods and founding Greek-speaking colonies.
However, their cities and culture were later destroyed by the Romans. Only very recently have archaeologists been able to reconstruct their history.
It is a jigsaw puzzle with many pieces still missing.
Ancient treasures
Salvatore Settis of the University of Pisa, one of Italy's leading archaeologists, has brought together in Catanzaro, Calabria's regional capital, more than 800 pieces of sculpture in marble and terracotta from Magna Graecia.
They were originally dug up or recovered from the sea all around the coasts of southern Italy, but are now scattered in museums and private collections around Europe.
MAGNA GRAECIA
Map of Italy showing location of Calabria
Greek settlers arrived in 8th Century BC
Founded colonies among small coastal settlements
Built an important centre of Greek civilisation
Cities began to decline after 5th Century

There are also gold and silver coins, ancient maps, books, inscriptions and Greek vases, as well as portrait busts and votive offerings to Greek gods whose shrines once dotted the Italian landscape.
Some of Europe's finest Greek temples are still to be seen at Paestum, south of Naples.
The area around them has delivered up some stunning archaeological discoveries, including wall paintings, elaborate bronze containers for honey, wine and oil, and inscriptions which provide important clues about this now almost vanished world.
Two large sheets of bronze, known as the Tablets of Heraclea, dug up in 1732 and now in the Naples museum, are also on show in Catanzaro.
They bear ancient inscriptions on one side in Greek and, on the other, a text dating from several hundred years later in Latin.
They provided some of the first documentary evidence about the lives of the Greek-speaking ancient inhabitants of this part of the Mediterranean.
Regeneration hopes
Mr Settis told me that as a native of Calabria, he had first become fascinated by an unexpected legacy of Magna Graecia - the large number of ancient Greek words that have survived more than 2,000 years in his local dialect.
Bust of a woman carrying a lotus flower, about 500BC
This figure of a woman with a lotus flower dates from about 500BC

"It was English aristocrats who first became infatuated with the Greek sculptures dug up in southern Italy in the late 18th Century.
"Your consul in Naples, Sir William Hamilton, was one of the first serious collectors of Greek art from Italy," Mr Settis said.
"Italian archaeologists and collectors began to get interested during the 19th and 20th centuries. The memory of this long-forgotten world is now being resurrected."
Catanzaro, situated right down in the toe of Italy, is a rather dull and ugly provincial capital built on two sides of a deep gorge, and does not normally figure on Italian art city tours.
However, the local authorities are hoping that foreign visitors who come to visit the new exhibition may also be interested in seeing the recently uncovered remains nearby of the city of Scolacium.
That was the city the Romans built when they conquered Magna Graecia, and founded their colonies on the ruins of former Greek settlements.The house of a former big landowner has been converted into a small museum with some fine pieces of Roman sculpture on show, dug up during recent excavations. 
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Κυριακή 21 Οκτωβρίου 2012

The Griko villages in Italy


The Griko villages usually have two names, an Italian one as well as a native Grikoname by which villagers refer to the town. The Griko villages are typically divided into small "islands" in the areas of southern Italy:
The Italian parliament has recognized the Griko community of Reggio Calabria and Salento as an ethnic and linguistic minority, under the name of "Minoranze linguistiche Grike dell'Etnia Griko-Calabrese e Salentina" (linguistic minority of the Griko-Calabrian and Salentinian ethnicity).
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L’area grecofona della Grecìa Salentina si trova in Puglia a sud della città di Lecce. Una volta si estendeva su un territorio più vasto di quello odierno, tra Otranto, Υδρούς in greco antico e Gallipoli, l’antica Καλλίπολις.




GrikoOggi l’area grecofona salentina (di circa 100 km.²) è costituita da 11 comuni:Calimera, Carpignano, Castrignano dei Greci, Corigliano d’Otranto, Martano, Martignano, Soleto, Sternatia, Zollino, Carpignano Salentino, Cutrofiano. Le tracce della preistoria che si riscontrano nell’area si intrecciano con i monumenti bizantini, quelli medievali e il barocco leccese.  
In questi paesi, in misura diversa, sopravvivono in ciascuno di loro, usi e tradizioni che prove risalgono ad una comune radice greca. Ci sono tre teorie che provano a spiegare la presenza di questo elemento greco dell’area. La prima lo collega direttamente alla Magna Grecia, la seconda al periodo bizantino (fine del IX secolo, e la terza al periodo romano a causa dei molteplici rapporti con la allora grecofona Asia Minore.
Nella Grecìa Salentina spesso si trovano toponimi di origine greca che si collegano all’ambiente, alla sua  peculiarità e alle attività degli abitanti. Per esempio, spesso vediamo il toponimo “litarà” e “risarà” dove domina la pietra, “tichi” (muretti) che definiscono il confine tra le proprietà, “ampèglia” (vigne), “ancinarèa” (carciofo), “caridèa” (noce), “alògna” (aia) ecc.
Patrimonio culturale di quest’area sono i “traudia” (i canti) e i suoni che si ispirano alla mitologia e alla tradizione musicale dell’antica Grecia.
Il Griko, questa lingua minoritaria, unisce i paesi grecofoni, anche se ci sono delle varianti tra i vari paesi.
Sino al 1945 parlavano il griko quasi tutti gli abitanti di Calimera, Castrignano dei Greci, Corigliano d’Otranto, Martano, Martignano, Sternatia, Zollino. Dopo la Seconda Guerra Mondiale per ragioni socioeconomiche (emigrazione, scuola, giornali, radio, televisione ecc.) il numero dei parlanti il griko è diminuito sensibilmente.
Negli ultimi anni, si osserva in aumento dell’interesse degli abitanti dell’area per le loro radici, la storia del loro territorio, le loro tradizioni e naturalmente anche per la loro lingua. Questo interesse si esprime principalmente con l’istituzione di vari centri culturali che promuovono le tradizioni popolari ma anche con l’insegnamento del griko nelle scuole.
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Παρασκευή 19 Οκτωβρίου 2012

Greeks in Italy



Griko-speaking areas in Salento and Calabria
Greek presence in Italy begins with the migrations of the old Greek Diaspora in the 8th century BC, continuing down to the present time. There is an ethnic Greek minority known as the Griko people,[1] who live in the Southern Italian regions of Calabria(Province of Reggio Calabria) and Puglia (peninsula of Salento), (the old Magna Graeciaregion) that speak a distinctive dialect of Greek called Griko.[2] They are believed to be remnants of the ancient[3] and medieval Greek communities, who have lived in the south of Italy for centuries. Alongside this group, a smaller number of more recent diaspora migrants from Greece lives in Italy, forming an expatriate community in the country.

Greek Diaspora 6th c. BC
In the eighth and seventh centuries BC, for various reasons, including demographic crisis (famine, overcrowding, climate change, etc.), the search for new commercial outlets and ports, and expulsion form their homeland, Greeks began a large colonization drive, including southern Italy.[4]
In this same time, Greek colonies were established in places as widely separated as the eastern coast of the Black Sea and Massalia (Marseille). They included settlements in Sicily and the southern part of the Italian peninsula. The Romans called the area of Sicily and the foot of the boot of Italy Magna Graecia(Latin, “Greater Greece”), since it was so densely inhabited by Greeks. The ancient geographers differed on whether the term included Sicily or merely Apulia and Calabria — Strabo being the most prominent advocate of the wider definitions.
Medieval

16th century Greek migrants in Italy. Left: Francesco Maurolico(c. 1494–1575) was born in Messina, Sicily to a Greek family who had settled there following the Ottoman invasion of Constantinople.[5][6] Right: Thomas Flanginis (c. 1578–1648) a wealthy Greek lawyer and merchant in Venice, who founded the Flanginian School a Greek college where many teachers were trained.[7]
During the Early Middle Ages, new waves of Greeks came to Magna Graecia from Greece and Asia Minor, as Southern Italy remained governed by the Eastern Roman Empire. Although most of the Greek inhabitants of Southern Italy became de-hellenized and no longer spoke Greek, remarkably a small Griko-speaking minority still exists today in Calabria and mostly in Salento. Griko is the name of a language combining ancient Doric, Byzantine Greek, and Italianelements, spoken by people in the Magna Graecia region. There is rich oral tradition and Griko folklore, limited now, though once numerous, to only a few thousand people, most of them having become absorbed into the surrounding Italian element. Records of Magna Graecia being predominantly Greek-speaking, date as late as the 11th century (the end of Byzantine domination in Southern Italy).
The migration of Byzantine Greek scholars and other emigres fromByzantium during the decline of the Byzantine empire (1203–1453) and mainly after the fall of Constantinople in 1453 until the 16th century, is considered by modern scholars as crucial in the revival ofGreek and Roman studies, arts and sciences, and subsequently in the formation of Renaissance humanism.[8] These emigres were grammarians, humanists, poets, writers, printers, lecturers, musicians, astronomers, architects, academics, artists, scribes, philosophers, scientists, politicians and theologians.[9]
In the decades following the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople many Greeks began to settle in territories of the Republic of Venice, including in Venice itself. In 1479 there were between 4000 and 5000 Greek residents in Venice.[10] Moreover, it was one of the economically strongest Greek communities of that time outside the Ottoman Empire.[11] In November of 1494 the Greeks in Venice asked permission and were permitted to found a Brotherhood of the Greek race,[12] a philanthropic and religious society which had its own committee and officers to represent the interests of the flourishing Greek community. This was the first official recognition of the legal status of the Greek colony by the Venitian authorities.[13] In 1539 the Greeks of Venice were permitted to begin building their own church, the San Giorgio dei Greci which still stands in the centre of Venice in the present day on the Rio dei Greci.[13]

Modern Italy

Although most of the Greek inhabitants of Southern Italy became entirely Italianized during the Middle Ages (as Paestum had already been in the 4th century BC), pockets of Greek culture and language remained and survived into modern times. This is due to the fact that the "traffic" between southern Italy and the Greek mainland never entirely stopped.
Thus, for example, Greeks re-colonized the region in the 16th and 17th century. This happened in reaction to the conquest of the Peloponnese by the Ottoman Turks. Especially after the fall of Coroni (1534) large numbers of Greeks and Albanians sought, and were granted, refuge in the areas of Calabria, Salento and Sicily. The Greeks from Coroni - the so-called Coronians - belonged to the nobility and brought with them substantial movable property. They were granted special privileges and given tax exemptions. Another part of the Greeks that moved to Italy came from the Mani region of the Peloponnese. The Maniots were known for their proud military traditions and for their bloody vendettas (another portion of these Greeks moved to Corsica; cf. the Corsican vendettas). These migrations strengthened the depopulated Italian south with a culturally vibrant and militarily capable element.
Griko people

The Griko people are a population group in Italy of ultimately Greek origin which still exists today in the Italian regions of Calabriaand Apulia.[14] The Griko people traditionally spoke the Griko language, a form of the Greek language combining ancient Doricand Byzantine Greek elements. Some believe that the origins of the Griko language may ultimately be traced to the colonies of Magna Graecia. Greeks were the dominant population element of some regions in the south of Italy, especially Calabria, the Salento, parts of Lucania and Sicily until the 12th century.[15][16] Over the past centuries the Griko have been heavily influenced by the Catholic Church and Latin culture and as a result many Griko have become largely assimilated[17] into mainstream Italian culture, though once numerous, the Griko are now limited, most of them having become absorbed into the surrounding Italian element. The Griko language is severely endangered due to language shift towards Italian and large-scale internal migration to the cities in recent decades.[18] The Griko community is currently estimated at 60,000 members.[19][20]

Immigrants

The Bulgari brand was founded by Sotirio Bulgari, a Greek immigrant to Italy
After World War II, a large number of Greeks immigrated to countries abroad, mostly to the United States, Canada and Australia, however, a smaller number of diaspora migrants from Greece entered Italy from World War II onwards, today the Greek diaspora community consists of some 30,000 people, the majority of whom are located in Rome and Central Italy.[21]

Notables Greeks in Italy


References

  1. ^ PARDO-DE-SANTAYANA, MANUEL; Pieroni, Andrea; Puri, Rajindra K. (2010). Ethnobotany in the new Europe: people, health, and wild plant resources. Berghahn Books. pp. 173–174. ISBN 1-84545-456-1, 9781845454562. "The ethnic Greek minorities living in southern Italy today exemplify the etablichment of independent and permenant colonial settlements of Greeks in history."
  2. ^ Greek MFA: Greek community in Italy
  3. ^ G. Rohlfs, Griechen und Romanen in Unteritalien, 1924.
  4. ^ Greek Italy:A Roadmap
  5. ^ Clagett, Marshall ; Archimedes (1988). Archimedes in the Middle Ages, Volume 3. The American Philosophical Society. p. 749.ISBN 0-87169-125-6. "Initially, we should observe that Francesco Maurolico (or Maruli or Maroli) was born in Messina on 16 September 1494, of a Greek family which had fled Constantinople after its fall to the Turks in 1453 and settled in Messina."
  6. ^ Cotterell, John (1996). Social Networks and Social Influences in Adolescence. Routledge. p. 34. ISBN 0-415-10973-6. "Francisco Maurolico, the son of Greek refugees from Constantinople, spread an interest in number theory through his study of arithmetic in two books published in 1575 after his death."
  7. ^ Biucchi, Edwina – Pilling, Simon – Collie, Keith (2002). Venice: an architectural guide. Batsford. ISBN 0-7134-8781-X. "Tommaso Flangini, a wealthy Greek merchant and . in 1664 . a late entrant to the Venetian Republic's patriciate) were enclosed"
  8. ^ Byzantines in Renaissance Italy
  9. ^ Greeks in Italy
  10. ^ Nicol, Donald M. (1996). The Byzantine lady: ten portraits, 1250-1500. Cambridge University Press. p. 104. ISBN 0-521-57623-7, 9780521576239. "In 1479 it was reckoned that there were between 4000 and 5000 Greek residents in Venice. They were not idle scroungers, they served the interests of their hosts in a number of ways."
  11. ^ Greece: Books and Writers. Ministry of Culture — National Book Centre of Greece. 2001. p. 54. ISBN 960-7894-29-4.
  12. ^ Nicol, Donald M. (1992). Byzantium and Venice: a study in diplomatic and cultural relations. Cambridge University Press. p. 416. ISBN 0-521-42894-7, 9780521428941. "In November 1494 the Greeks asked permission to form a Brotherhood of the Greek race."
  13. ^ a b Nicol, Donald M. (1996). The Byzantine lady: ten portraits, 1250-1500. Cambridge University Press. p. 104. ISBN 0-521-57623-7, 9780521576239. "In 1494 the Greeks in Venice were permitted to found a Brotherhood of the Greek race, a philanthropic and religious society with its own officers and committee to represent the interests of the Greek community. It was the first formal recognition by Venice of the legal status of the Greek colony. But it was not until 1539 that they were authorized to begin building their own church of San Giorgio dei Greci which still stands in the centre of Venice on the Rio dei Greci."
  14. ^ Bekerman Zvi; Kopelowitz, Ezra (2008). Cultural education-- cultural sustainability: minority, diaspora, indigenous, and ethno-religious groups in multicultural societies. Routledge. p. 390. ISBN 0-8058-5724-9, 9780805857245. "Griko Milume - This reaction was even more pronounced in the southern Italian communities of Greek origins. There are two distinct clusters, in Puglia and Calabria, which have managed to preserve their language, Griko or Grecanico, all through the historical events that have shaped Italy. While being Italian citizens, they are actually aware of their Greek roots and again the defense of their language is the key to their identity."
  15. ^ Loud, G. A. (2007). The Latin Church in Norman Italy. Cambridge University Press. p. 494. ISBN 0-521-25551-1, 9780521255516. "At the end of the twelfth century…While in Apulia Greeks were in a majority – and indeed present in any numbers at all – only in the Salento peninsula in the extreme south, at the time of the conquest they had an overwhelming preponderance in Lucaina and central and southern Calabria, as well as comprising anything up to a third of the population of Sicily, concentrated especially in the north-east of the island, the Val Demone."
  16. ^ Kleinhenz, Christopher (2004). Medieval Italy: an encyclopedia, Volume 1. Routledge. pp. 444–445. ISBN 0-415-93930-5, 9780415939300. "In Lucania (northern Calabria, Basilicata, and southern-most portion of today’s Campania)… From the late ninth century into the eleventh, Greek-speaking populations and Byzantine temporal power advanced, in stages but by no means always in tandem, out of southern Calabria and the lower Salentine peninsula across Lucania and through much of Apulia as well. By the early eleventh century, Greek settlement had radiated northward and had reached the interior of the Cilento, deep in Salernitan territory. Parts of the central and north-western Salento, recovered early, came to have a Greek majority through immigration, as did parts of Lucania."
  17. ^ Pounds, Norman John Greville (1976). An historical geography of Europe, 450 B.C.-A.D.1330. CUP Archive. p. 251. ISBN 0-521-29126-7, 9780521291262. "Greeks had also settled in southern Italy and Sicily which retained until Norman conquest a tenuous link with Constantinople. At the time of Norman invasion, the Greeks were a very important minority, and their monasteries provided the institutional basis for the preservation of Greek culture. The Normans, however, restored the balance and permited Latin culture to re-assert itself. By 1100 the Greeks were largely assimilated and only a few colonies remained in eastern Sicily and Calabria; even here Greek lived alongside and intermarried with Latin, and the Greek colonies were evidently declining."
  18. ^ Moseley, Christopher (2007). Encyclopedia of the world's endangered languages. Routledge. p. 248. ISBN 0-7007-1197-X, 9780700711970. "Griko (also called Italiot Greek) Italy: spoken in the Salento peninsula in Lecce Province in southern Apulia and in a few villages near Reggio di Calabria in southern Calabria... South Italian influence has been strong for a long time. Severely Endangered."
  19. ^ "Grecia Salentina official site (in Italian).". www.greciasalentina.org.org. Retrieved 2011-February. "La popolazione complessiva dell’Unione è di 54278 residenti così distribuiti (Dati Istat al 31° dicembre 2005. Comune Popolazione Calimera 7351 Carpignano Salentino 3868 Castrignano dei Greci 4164 Corigliano d'Otranto 5762 Cutrofiano 9250 Martano 9588 Martignano 1784 Melpignano 2234 Soleto 5551 Sternatia 2583 Zollino 2143 Totale 54278"
  20. ^ Bellinello, Pier Francesco (1998). Minoranze etniche e linguistiche. Bios. p. 53. ISBN 88-7740-121-4 9788877401212. "Le attuali colonie Greche calabresi; La Grecìa calabrese si inscrive nel massiccio aspromontano e si concentra nell'ampia e frastagliata valle dell'Amendolea e nelle balze più a oriente, dove sorgono le fiumare dette di S. Pasquale, di Palizzi e Sidèroni e che costituiscono la Bovesia vera e propria. Compresa nei territori di cinque comuni (Bova Superiore, Bova Marina, Roccaforte del Greco, Roghudi, Condofuri), la Grecia si estende per circa 233 kmq. La popolazione anagrafica complessiva è di circa 14.000 unità."
  21. ^ "Hellenic Republic Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Italy, The Greek Community". "Greek community. The Greek diaspora consists of some 30,000 people, most of whom are to be found in Central Italy. There has also been an age-old presence of Italian nationals of Greek descent, who speak the Greco dialect peculiar to the Magna Graecia region. This dialect can be traced historically back to the era of Byzantine rule, but even as far back as classical antiquity."
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