Comment by skissane | Hacker News Reader

Comment by skissane | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> Also, it looks like he was convicted under the Holy Roman Empire, which doesn't really exist anymore. I'm not sure who there is to overturn his conviction.

When Dante was convicted in 1302, Florence was the Republic of Florence. The Republic of Florence was subject to the Holy Roman Empire, but still remained a distinct legal jurisdiction (like a state.) The Republic of Florence was replaced by the Grand Duchy of Tuscany in 1569, which ruled Florence (with some interruptions) until 1859, when it was conquered by the Kingdom of Sardinia, which soon became the modern Kingdom of Italy, which in turn became the present-day Italian Republic after WW2. Each successor entity inherited the legal rights of its predecessor entity – the Italian Republic inherited the legal rights of the Kingdom of Italy, which in turn inherited the legal rights of the Kingdom of Sardinia, which in turn inherited the legal rights of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, which in turn inherited the legal rights of the Republic of Florence. One of the legal rights of the Republic of Florence was to rescind the legal judgements of its courts, even posthumously. Hence, that legal right has been inherited, through a chain of successors, by the modern-day Italian Republic, which therefore has a unique legal authority (not possessed by any other jurisdiction) to formally rescind Dante's conviction and sentence. Yes, it is a right of no practical effect, its exercise would be of purely symbolic consequence, but it would be the unique possession of the Italian Republic.

(The succession story I presented – Republic of Florence => Grand Duchy of Tuscany => Kingdom of Sardinia => Kingdom of Italy => Italian Republic – is no doubt somewhat simplified, but I don't think fleshing out those added details would change the ultimate conclusion.)

As a side note the unifications of Italy and Germany are fascinating history and the culture that emerged due to them is also likely the reason those are the two most famous historical fascist nations (and why it was born in those places.) The nationalism required to (and built up for the purpose) unify the countries gave rise to ultra nationalism as generations of wanting to have a greater nature built a population who thought conquest was the only method to achieve peace and prosperity.

I like this explanation very much, I just don't know if I can agree with it. If it's taken from a historian or you have any in-depth references, I would be happy to read more about it!

Big reasons why fascism was born in Italy was the counter-revolutionary movement as a response to the big socialist movement and the disastrous social and economical situation after WWI, which seem equally common in Germany but also in other Fascist countries (Portugal, Spain). My guess is that we don't remember those as much mostly because they remained neutral in WWII, so there was no propaganda about them.

While Prussian culture and the unification of Germany has been done to death in regards to the origin of Nazism (my personal favorite detailing of that history and how Nazism may have its roots in that culture is Iron Kingdom) I’m not sure I’ve read a similar account irt Italy, it is just my pet theory.

Further, I’d argue that Portugal and Spain can play a role to help further this theory. While Italy and Germany spent the years developing a national identity at war to enlarge their nations (and form this outright) Spain and Portugal spent that same time period developing into a single culture while fending off newcomers and trying to keep their nations intact. For this reason their form a fascism was less expansionist (or to be correct, was less able to be convinced that expansion was their only hope.)

The Italian national identity is rather weak compared to other European nations. Metternich famously quipped that “‘Italy’ is a geographic expression”, and it is still true today to some extent.

Just like Austria was. Just a geographic expression that acquired some political meaning at a certain point in time.

The word "Italia" dates back to before Rome was not even a town. It used to be the name given to all those populations living in the central and southern part of the peninsula because of their habit to worship the "vitello" (calf) or to breed calfs.

Before becoming a politically united nation, they used to speak the very same language from Sicily to Piedmont, from Veneto to Sardinia. "Italia" was a geographic expression only for the blinds.

America has been named after Amerigo (Americo) Vespucci, the Italian explorer who recognized it was actually as a brand new world. And so on.

Yes, Italy doesn't seem to be that united today. The same happens to Spain, the United Kingdom and even the USA sometimes show cracks in the union between the two coasts...

> Before becoming a politically united nation, they used to speak the very same language from Sicily to Piedmont, from Veneto to Sardinia. "Italia" was a geographic expression only for the blinds.

Source? According to linguist De Mauro, before the Italian unification the percentage of Italian speakers was around 2.5% (on 25 millions inhabitants). Most of the people were speaking their own dialects, which - albeit descending from Latin - are not necessarily mutually intellegible

> According to linguist De Mauro ... Source?

Mine is here: https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingua_italiana#Dal_latino_vol...

Your source quotes De Mauro as well :)

I guess it very much depends on whether you consider writers, academics, and in general literate people, or the majority of the populace. In the former case, it's true that Italian was used across the peninsula.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com