Mazzini as the one and only Godfather to the Sicilian Mafia
The French Connection: The Knights of Malta, the Scottish Rite & the Rise of the Mafia Brotherhoods Part III
“Spanish kings ruled Naples and Sicily from 1504 to 1707 and from 1738 to 1860. In the first Spanish reign, a criminal society was founded in Naples called the ‘camorra,’ a Spanish word meaning ‘fight’ or ‘quarrel.’
The infant Camorra was a direct offshoot of the Garduna, and very probably was composed of Spanish Gardunists and native Neapolitians.*[1] During the second Spanish reign, the Camorra gave birth to a new society, the Sicilian Mafia. The connecting link between the Camorra and the Mafia seems to have been the Italian revolutionary hero Guiseppe Mazzini.”
- David Leon Chandler “Brothers in Blood: The Rise of the Criminal Brotherhoods” (1975)
[This is Part III of this series. For Part I refer here, Part II refer here.]
The Camorra of Naples was the most powerful criminal society of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
David Leon Chandler writes in “Brothers in Blood”:[2]
“In the Camorra we find the contemporary godfather – fully recognizable, fully grown – not an ancient museum relic with bare feet, clanking sword, and paralyzing breath, but a silk-suited, swaggering, knowledgeable solver of problems.
…
The earliest investigation of the origins of the Camorra was published in 1862 by the French historian Marc Monnier. He concluded that the Camorra was an offshoot of the Garduna and noted that the two societies had much in common. Both were based on hierarchical government, both had the same laws, both existed to sell criminal services. The Camorra, however, went a step beyond the Garduna operation. Whereas the Garduna sold services to individual clients, the Camorra sold on a mass-market basis, providing law and order and merchants’ licenses to entire sections of Naples and taxing the population accordingly. The Camorra was a second government.”
The organization of the Camorra brotherhood would bare a great deal of similarity with the notorious secret government and secret police of the Republic of Venice.[3] It is also reminiscent of the Templar Order, who did the bidding for the Republic of Venice during the Crusades when they held control over the Papacy.[4]
The Templars were the first Corporation, and their Temple Church built in London in 1185 would serve as London’s first bank.[5] A banking system that would serve Crusaders who traveled throughout the Mediterranean into Jerusalem. This system allowed for the Templars to travel without having to carry all their immense wealth with them, they could voyage over great distances without having to carry all of their coin and take out money from their Templar bank based in Jerusalem.
The Templars were among the first to use the term Grand Master in reference to the commander of a Knight’s Order. The only other order to have done this before the Templars was the Knights Hospitaller (later known as the Knights of Malta) less than twenty years before.
However, the Knights Hospitaller were not the originators of the term Grand Master either. It appears that it was the Catholic Benedictine Order that was the first to coin the term. In fact, it appears that there were several military orders that had been based upon the Order of St. Benedict or in some way originating from it.[6]
“Each [knight’s] order was governed by a Grand Master who had jurisdiction over the whole order, and under him were the commanders who ruled over the various houses. The following were the military orders connected with the Benedictine Order… (a) The Knights Templars, founded in 1118. St. Bernard of Clairvaux drew up their rule, and they always regarded the Cistercians as their brethren. For this reason they adopted a white dress, to which they added a red cross. … In Spain there were: (b) The Knights of Calatrava founded in 1158 to assist in protecting Spain against the Moorish invasions. The Knights of Calatrava owed their origin to the abbot and monks of the Cistercian monastery of Fitero. The general chapter of Cîteaux drew up a rule of life and exercised a general supervision over them. The black hood and short scapular which they wore denoted their connexion with Cîteaux. The order possessed fifty-six commanderies, chiefly in Andalusia. The Nuns of Calatrava were established c. 1219. They were cloistered, observing the rule of the Cistercian nuns and wearing a similar habit, but they were under the jurisdiction of the Grand Master of the knights. (c) Knights of Alcantara, or of San Julian del Pereyro, in Castille, founded about the same time and for the same purpose as the Knights of Calatrava. They adopted a mitigated form of St. Benedict's Rule, to which certain observances borrowed from Calatrava were added. They also used the black hood and abbreviated scapular. It was at one time proposed to unite this order with that of Calatrava, but the scheme failed of execution. They possessed thirty-seven commanderies. (d) Knights of Montesa, founded 1316, an offshoot from Calatrava, instituted by ten knights of that order who placed themselves under the abbot of Cîteaux instead of their own Grand Master. (e) Knights of St. George of Alfama, founded in 1201; united to the Order of Montesa in 1399.”
And of course we also have the Knights Hospitaller (aka Knights of Malta) who had as their first Grand Master a Benedictine monk, Blessed Gerard, their creator.
Thus, the Garduna brotherhood who also had a Grand Master and whose tradition and form of organization was carried forward into all the subsequent mafia brotherhoods, was likely taught their structure of organization from the Knights of Calatrava and Alcantara of the Benedictine militant order.
And so we find a common origin for the Knights Templar, the Knights Hospitaller (aka Knights of Malta) and the first Mafia brotherhood - the Garduna, who were all using the Grand Master structure of a militant order that had been taught to them by the Catholic Benedictines. As we will see later on in this series, the Jesuits would also model themselves off of the Benedictine Order.
The second Mafia brotherhood came about in Naples, just beside Amalfi, the base of the Benedictine monk Blessed Gerard and creator and Grand Master of the Knights of Malta. And as scholars, such as 19th century French historian Marc Monnier have observed, the Camorra are most certainly an offshoot of the Garduna due to their great similarity in structure, organisation, code of conduct and initiation rituals.
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Thus, the mafia brotherhoods were clearly another form of militant order that would wage war on behalf of a Crusader ideology. The knights would wage war overseas in distant lands against foreign people, and the mafia would wage war within the European cities.
David Leon Chandler writes in “Brothers in Blood”:[7]
“The rank-and-file [of the Camorra] were organized into brigades or families. Each brigade (brigata) was presided over by a captain (capo). All the captains of Naples collectively formed a Grand Council, which functioned both as a supreme court and as a legislature. Normally, the Grand Council was the final authority in the Camorra, but occasionally an exceptionally strong captain could impose his authority on the council and emerge as a grand master or, in modern terms, a boss of bosses.
Monnier’s findings [that Camorra was a direct continuation of the Garduna] were confirmed in the 1870s by another researcher, Cesare Lombroso, known as the father of modern criminology… Lombroso believed that the Camorra dated from at least the sixteenth century and possibly as early as the reign of Ferdinand of Spain, who died in 1516. [author’s note: recall in Part II of this series that it was King Ferdinand who gave the Garduna power and influence in service to the Spanish Inquisition.]
Lombroso was impressed with the Camorra’s well-developed social structure. It had an argot (language) of its own and an oral history. He classified the Camorra’s organizational structure as ‘feudal.’ Territory was allocated to families on a vassalage basis, and the Grand Council or Grand Master granted licenses to do business within the territory. In return, each family owed the governing body a portion of its revenues, as well as homage and obedience.”
Thus, King Ferdinand II who would launch the influence and power of the first Mafia Brotherhood – the Garduna, in service to the Spanish Inquisition, may have also been directly responsible for the expansion of this brotherhood into Naples as the Camorra Brotherhood. (See Part II for the story of the Garduna)
The initiation rites and swearing of oaths upon entering the secret Mafia brotherhoods were also a continuation from the Garduna, down to the Camorra, followed by the Sicilian Mafia.
“Until the mid-nineteenth century, the picciotto could only become a full-fledged Camorrist by committing a murder ordered by the society. This requirement was later eliminated.* [* The tradition, however, carried on. In the American Cosa Nostra it is a mark of distinction for a member to have ‘got his bones’; that is, to have murdered someone on the orders of a superior.] Once the murder was done, the picciotto swore an oath on crossed swords with his hands immersed in his own blood that he would have no secret relation with the police, that he would never denounce a companion, that he would never have recourse to the law.
Once initiated into full membership, each man took his place in the lower ranks of the family structure. Families were divided into subgroups called paranze. Bosses of paranze had the title of caporegima. The capo supervised the everyday details of robbery, murder for hire, protection, blackmail, loan-sharking, and the taxing of gambling halls. He levied a franchise tax on cabdrivers, boatmen, auctioneers, and dealers at state fairs headquartered in his district.
…
The findings of Camorra researchers in the nineteenth century had been made nearly four hundred years earlier by Cervantes in his story of the Garduna. The criminal services, the division of funds, the laws, and to a certain extent the organizational structure were identical and unchanged.
Equally striking is testimony before the US Senate in 1964 which shows the Cosa Nostra to be the same creature as that described by Cervantes, Monnier, and Lombroso.”[8]
The Camorra virtually ruled Naples during the reign of the Spanish Bourbons, from 1738 to 1860. The House of Bourbon is a dynasty that originated in the Kingdom of France as a branch of the Capetian dynasty, the royal House of France. Bourbon kings first ruled France and Navarre in the 16th century.
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A branch descended from the French Bourbons came to rule Spain in the 18th century and is the current Spanish royal family, known today as the House of Bourbon-Anjou. Further branches, descended from the Spanish Bourbons, held thrones in Naples, Sicily, and Parma.
During the 122-year Bourbon rule, the Camorra expanded into nearly every field of economic enterprise including the stock market, food warehouses, manufacturing, and the licensing of retail shops. The Camorra’s expansion into “legitimate business” was a turning point in the philosophy of the brotherhood, which had previously confined itself to out-and-out crime. This widening of interests was caused by a difference in quality of government.[9]
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Chandler writes:
“In Spain the regime reserved the police powers to itself and provided services to meet at least the minimal needs of the population. That limited the Garduna’s opportunities for growth. In the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, however, the Spanish rulers offered virtually no services, being content simply to collect taxes. The Camorra, an existing and disciplined bureaucracy, moved in to fill the vacuum, first to control crime as the paid agent of the Bourbon police, and afterward as the de facto preserver of law, order, and commerce in the cities and towns of southern Italy.”[10]
C.W. Heckethorn writes in his Secret Societies of All Ages:
“…the police being very badly organized under the Bourbon regime, leading merchants were glad to engage the Camorra to superintend the loading and unloading of merchandise. Camorristi were found at every town gate, the offices of the tax collector, the customs house, and the stations of coachmen and porters to impose their tax. Nurserymen bringing fruit into the town were mulcted for one sou the basket.”
Camorra protection was encouraged by the police; by paying a small sum every month, the private householder received protection against crime which the regular police were unable or unwilling to give.
In 1859, a year before the Italian revolution, the Bourbon police discovered that the Camorra was conducting espionage for the revolutionary alliance headed by King Victor Emannuel II of Sardinia and the republicans Garibaldi and Mazzini.[11] Some three hundred of the Camorra rank and file were rounded up and put into prison. In June 1860, when the revolution succeeded, the Camorrists were freed.
According to Heckethorn:
“Their first act was to attack the commissaries of police, to burn their papers, and to beat the gendarmes to death with cudgels. The Camorra then encouraged the general population of Naples to riot and loot, and many neighborhoods even commandeered warehouses to store their contraband. Don Liborio, the new Prefect of Police, threw himself into the arms of the Camorristi to save Naples from pillage. And they prevented it. They were formed into a civic guard which kept order.”
Thus, the Camorrists had beaten most of the police to death upon their release from prison. With no police force the Camorrists then start and foment a riot that threatens to pillage the entire city of Naples. The Prefect of the Police then surrenders to the Camorrists and the Camorrists now serve as the civic guard. This will be a repeating theme throughout this series. That the Mafia Brotherhood would play a direct hand in unleashing civil unrule to justify a take-over of not only the police force and the military but all major governing institutions in the province. It was a theme that would emerge from the networks and direct overseeing of Garibaldi’s Redshirts and Mazzini, which will be discussed in detail in this series.
This is very similar to the sort of strategy Oswald Mosley would later use with his Blackshirts, though he was not as successful in riling up the average Britain to sack their own towns. It was Mosley’s intention to set up his Blackshirts as a civic guard as well, to enforce a take-over on all levels of government with Mosley even holding an MP seat in Parliament for a prolonged period with a great deal of political backing. This was all towards organising a fascist takeover of Britain, directly modeled off of Mussolini’s Blackshirts along with his brand of National Socialism/Corporate Fascism. (For more on this story refer here.)
Chandler writes in Brothers in Blood:
“For the next several months, the [Camorra] society functioned as the police, judges, and tax collectors of Naples. During their administration, the crime rate dropped dramatically. Smuggling, for instance, had been the most widespread crime in Naples. It vanished entirely. The reason was that the Camorra had been the chief practitioner of smuggling. The society now forbade it and instead embezzled the duty taxes it collected on all goods entering Naples.
This proved to be a mistake…In the early months of 1861 the public treasury was receiving an average of twenty-five sous, approximately $1.10, in daily import duties for the entire port of Naples.
The regime responded with a surprise nighttime raid, arresting ninety Camorrists. The following day, import duties turned over to the government increased to approximately $4,200. But their compliance came too late. The Camorra’s reign as an officially authorized government agency had ended.”[12]
Many Camorrists would be arrested and sent to prisons throughout Italy to remove them from Naples.
Heckethorn writes in his Secret Societies of All Ages:
“Many of them [Camorrists] returned to Naples and raised tumults in the streets. As the months passed, they became powerful at elections and with their cudgels directed the politics of the electors. Peaceful citizens were nightly assaulted and robbed in the streets of Naples. Burglaries became quite common. This state of things lasted till 1862.”
The southern provinces were declared to be in a state of siege and martial law was imposed. The Royal Italian Army was brought in to fight the Camorrists take-over, from Naples down into Sicily, between five and ten thousand troops were engaged for more than a year in the civil war. The battle with the army did not exterminate the Camorra but it did mark the end of its power by 1863. However, the Camorra Brotherhood did continue on and the “branches in Sicily” were replaced by a new society, called the Mafia.
The successor to the Camorra was the Sicilian Mafia. “And it can almost definitely be stated that the Sicilian Mafia was created by one man in Palermo in the year 1860.”[13]
That man was Guiseppe Mazzini.
The French Revolution, Freemasons and the Role of Napoleon
Before we discuss the role of Mazzini in creating the Sicilian Mafia it is essential that we first have some orientation in our understanding of the French Revolution as what could have been a true liberation of the French people from tyrannical rulers and how it was sabotaged, namely by the Jacobin terrorists, a network that would have its ties with the Knights of Malta and Malta Freemasonry, and how this Jacobin cause was used throughout the 19th century to in fact undo any genuine movement towards true republicanism, liberty and unification, as in the fight for the unification of Italy that Mazzini supposedly fought so hard to bring about.
This romantic view of such “heroic” characters who fought for republicanism and liberty of the people, such as Napoleon, Garibaldi and Mazzini, will be exposed for the monstrous causes they were in true service to in our next instalment - I can assure you of that.
Second Instalment to “Mazzini as the one and only Godfather to the Sicilian Mafia” will be published next week.
Cynthia Chung is the President of the Rising Tide Foundation and author of the book “The Empire on Which the Black Sun Never Set,” consider supporting her work by making a donation and subscribing to her substack page Through A Glass Darkly.
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Footnotes:
[1] *The assumption is based on the pattern of subsequent brotherhood societies such as the Sicilian Mafia, the American Mafia, and the American Cosa Nostra. In each of these, a cadre of immigrant members from the parent society collaborated with native criminals to form a new society – footnote by David Leon Chandler.
[2] David Leon Chandler. Brothers in Blood: The Rise of the Criminal Brotherhoods (1975). Pg. 15
[3] It is beyond the scope of this paper to discuss Venice in greater detail, however, if the reader wishes to know more they can refer to my two classes on Venice (with transcripts included) here and here.
[4] For more on this story refer to Webster Tarpley’s excellent piece “Venice’s War Against Western Civilization”.
[5] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-38499883
[6] https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02443a.htm
[7] David Leon Chandler. Brothers in Blood: The Rise of the Criminal Brotherhoods (1975). Pg. 16
[8] Ibid
[9] Ibid
[10] Ibid, pg 22
[11] Ibid.
[12] Ibid, pg. 22
[13] Ibid
Great insight and very interesting! Thanks and best regards Cynthia.
Thank you, Cynthia, for delving into this part of Universal History!