Masaniello - Alexandre Dumas

This meetup is hosted by Wisdom and Woe. For more details and to sign up for this event, go to: https://www.meetup.com/wisdom-and-woe/events/291273038

Tommaso Anielo (better known as "Masaniello") was an illiterate fishmonger-turned-"Fisherman King of Naples." His tale of rebellion, victory, betrayal, and defeat--in other words, all the elements of a good story--has been adapted extensively for literature, poetry, paint, plays, and opera.

In the mid-seventeenth century, Naples was under the rule of Habsburg Spain. To supply its protracted military campaigns, the Court of Madrid fettered the city with ever-increasing demands for men, money, and equipment. A new tax on fruit finally pushed the citizenry into revolt.

On 7 July 1647, Naples was celebrating an annual festival featuring a historical recreation of the Battle of Lepanto (7 October 1571). This battle was symbolically significant not only as a military victory of the Spanish over the invading Ottomans, but as a religious victory of the Catholics over invading Islam. Masaniello took the opportunity to rally the mock armies into an actual fighting force and marched upon the castle of the Spanish viceroy.

Masaniello's victory was short-lived. He was assassinated less than ten days later, on 16 July 1647. But from the moment of his death, his figure became legendary. During the 19th-century Risorgimento, he was exalted as a freedom fighter, a hero of the Italian proletariat, and a spiritual successor to Cola di Rienzo.

Wisdom and Woe is a philosophy and literature discussion group dedicated to exploring the world, work, life, and times of Herman Melville and the 19th century Romantic movement. The group is free and open to anybody with an interest in learning and growing by "diving deeper" into "time and eternity, things of this world and of the next, and books, and publishers, and all possible and impossible matters."