 |
| Isola Bella overflowing with the Borromeo Palace and its terraced gardens |
 |
| Borromeo Palace |
The entrance to the main gallery of the palace is a history lesson. It is lined with massive crests of the powerful and warring families of Italy's past, the Medici, the Farneses, the Odescalchis, the Savojas, the Barberinis and, of course, the Borromeos themselves. As various members of these families came to visit, they would see their crests displayed prominently along the walls of the staircase. So, too, would lesser visitors who were by these crests silently instructed in the power of the Borromeo family. Italy's history is a history of powerful families. Even the mafia sees itself as a “crime family.”
The Medici, for
example, were the dominant family of Florence, warring against the Republicans.
(Under their despotic rule, Florence experienced one of the most fruitful
periods of the Italian Renaissance.) The war between the Torriani and Visconti
families over control of Milan ended with Como falling to the Visconti in 1335.
Como has plowed in the wake of Milanese history ever since. The Sforza family
of Milan is another example of a warring family. In fact, Francesco Sforza and
his son fought one another at the Battle of Montolmo in 1444. The elder won. The Barberinis and the
Farneses are on the Borromeo staircase. They fought one another in the Castro
wars, though there was no clear winner.
And then, of
course, there is that feud between the Montagues and the Capulets that led to
the demise of both Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare could take for granted that
powerful families would be at one another’s throats. After all, they were
Italian.
Things have
changed in modern times. Italian family bonds are as strong as ever, but the
families are nowhere near as belligerent as they once were with the exception,
of course, of the mafioso. In today’s Italy it is not uncommon for young Italian
men and women to live with their families all the way through college. Children
from Como who go to college in Milan don't live in Milan. They take the
Ferrovie Nord everyday. It takes about an hour each way. Those who go farther
afield, say Venice, come home on weekends.
The
domestication of the Italian family may not be accidental. I am thinking of the
experiments by the Russian scientist, Dmitri Belyaev, who selected foxes for
their aggressive tendencies and bred them through twenty generations, selecting
foxes at certain stages, for example, the 8th generation, that showed
themselves to be demonstrably less aggressive than their siblings. With
repeated selection of less aggressive foxes, Belyaev ultimately produced a breed
of fox that resembled the family dog. You can go on line now and purchase a
Belyaev fox as a pet!
Could the decline
of the warring families in Italian history be related to Belyaev's experiments?
When I mentioned this to a friend and colleague, he thought it was highly
possible. He even suggested an ingenious explanation for the trend toward
tranquility; namely, the widespread use of firearms. His argument was that
since only aggressive medieval families acquired firearms, it would be only
aggressive families using them against one another. In other words over the
centuries aggressive families knocked one another off, leaving the field to
their placid relatives. That might be an argument for supporting the NRA.
On second
thought, maybe not.
