Southern Italy

Southern Italy (Italian: Sud Italia; Neapolitan: 'o Sudde; Sicilian: Italia dû Sud) or Mezzogiorno (Italian pronunciation: [ˌmɛddzoˈdʒorno],^[2] literally "Midday" or "Noon";^[3][4] in Neapolitan: 'o Miezojuorno; in Sicilian: Mezzujornu) is a macroregion of Italy meant to broadly denote the southern half of the Italian state.

Southern Italy covers in both historic and cultural terms the land once under the administration of the former Kingdoms of Naples and Sicily (officially denominated Regnum Siciliae citra Pharum and ultra Pharum, that is "Kingdom of Sicily on the other side of the Strait" and "across the Strait"), which shared a common organization into Italy's largest pre-unitarian state, the Kingdom of the two Sicilies.^{[5][6][7][8][9]} The island of Sardinia had a different history from the aforementioned regions, but is nonetheless often grouped together with the Mezzogiorno.^[10][11]

The Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) employs the term "South Italy" (Italia Meridionale) to identify one of the five statistical regions in its reportings without Sicily and Sardinia, which form a distinct statistical region denominated "Insular Italy" (Italia Insulare).^[12] These same subdivisions are at the bottom of the Italian First level NUTS of the European Union and the Italian constituencies for the European Parliament.

Contents

• 1

• Etymology

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• 2

• Regions

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• 3

• Geography

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• 4

• History

  • 4.1

  • Prehistory and antiquity

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  • 4.2

  • Middle Ages

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  • 4.3

  • Early modern history

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  • 4.4

  • Early 19th century

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  • 4.5

  • Southern and Northern Italy in 1860

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  • 4.6

  • After 1861

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• 5

• Demography

  • 5.1

  • Population

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• 6

• Economy

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• 7

• Culture

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• 8

• See also

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• 9

• References

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• 10

• Further reading

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Etymology[edit]

In a similar fashion to France's Midi ("midday" or "noon" in French), the Italian term Mezzogiorno refers to the intensity and the position of sunshine at midday in the South of the Italian peninsula.^[3] The term later came into vogue after the annexation of the Bourbon Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, together with the other Italian states, and the subsequent Italian unification of 1861.

Regions[edit]

Further information: Regions of Italy

Southern Italy is generally thought to comprise the administrative regions that correspond to the geopolitical extent of the historical Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, starting from Abruzzo, Apulia, Basilicata, Campania, Calabria, Molise, and Sicily; because of this historical reason, and the fact that southern Italian dialects are spoken there as well, some also include the southernmost and easternmost parts of Lazio, (namely the districts of Frosinone, Sora, Cassino, Gaeta, Cittaducale, Formia and Amatrice) within the Mezzogiorno. The island of Sardinia, although being culturally, linguistically and historically less related to the aforementioned regions than any of them is to each other, is frequently included as part of the Mezzogiorno,^[11][13] often for statistical and economical purposes.^[14][13][15]

Geography[edit]

Further information: Geography of Italy

Mount Vulture in Basilicata

Southern Italy forms the lower part of the Italian "boot", containing the ankle (Campania), the toe (Calabria), the arch (Basilicata), and the heel (Apulia), Molise (north of Apulia) and Abruzzo (north of Molise) along with Sicily, removed from Calabria by the narrow Strait of Messina. Separating the "heel" and the "boot" is the Gulf of Taranto, named after the city of Taranto, which is at an angle between the heel and the boot itself. It is an arm of the Ionian Sea.

The island of Sardinia, to the west of the Italian peninsula and right below the French island of Corsica, might also be included.

On the eastern coast is the Adriatic Sea, leading into the rest of the Mediterranean through the Strait of Otranto (named after the largest city on the tip of the heel). On the Adriatic, south of the "spur" of the boot, the peninsula of Monte Gargano; on the Tyrrhenian Sea, the Gulf of Salerno, the Gulf of Naples, the Gulf of Policastro and the Gulf of Gaeta are each named after a large coastal city. Along the northern coast of the Salernitan Gulf and on the south of the Sorrentine Peninsula runs the Amalfi Coast. Off the tip of the peninsula is the isle of Capri.

The climate is mainly Mediterranean (Köppen climate classification Csa), except at the highest elevations (Dsa, Dsb) and the semi-arid eastern stretches in Apulia and Molise, along the Ionian Sea in Calabria and the southern stretches of Sicily (BSw). The largest city of Southern Italy is Naples, a name from the Greek that it has historically maintained for millennia. Bari, Taranto, Reggio Calabria, Foggia, and Salerno are the next largest cities in the area. The region is geologically very active, with the exception of Salento in Apulia, and highly seismic: the 1980 Irpinia earthquake killed 2,914 people, injured more than 10,000 and left 300,000 homeless.

History[edit]

Main article: History of Italy

Prehistory and antiquity[edit]

See also: Magna Graecia

Greek temple of Hera, Selinunte, Sicily.

Southern Italy under Augustus

.

Ancient Greek colonies and their dialect groupings in Southern Italy.^[16]

Northwestern Greek

Achaean

Doric

Ionian

In the 8th and 7th centuries BCE, for various reasons, including demographic crisis (famine, overcrowding, etc.), the search for new commercial outlets and ports, and expulsion from their homeland, Greeks began to settle in Southern Italy.^[17] Also during this period, Greek colonies were established in places as widely separated as the eastern coast of the Black Sea, Eastern Libya and Massalia (Marseille). They included settlements in Sicily and the southern part of the Italian Peninsula. The first Greek settlers found Italy inhabited by three major populations: Ausones, Oenotrians and Iapyges (these last ones were subdivided into three tribes: Daunians, Peucetians and Messapians). The relationships between the Greek settlers and the native peoples were initially hostile (especially with the Iapygian tribes), but finally the hellenic influence definitely shaped their culture and way of life.

The Romans used to call the area of Sicily and coastal Southern Italy Magna Graecia ("Great Greece"), since it was so densely inhabited by the 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.

With this colonisation, Greek culture was exported to Italy, in its dialects of the Ancient Greek language, its religious rites and its traditions of the independent polis. An original Hellenic civilization soon developed, later interacting with the native Italic and Latin civilisations. The most important cultural transplant was the Chalcidean/Cumaean variety of the Greek alphabet, which was adopted by the Etruscans; the Old Italic alphabet subsequently evolved into the Latin alphabet, which became the most widely used alphabet in the world.

Many of the new Hellenic cities became very rich and powerful, like Neapolis (Νεάπολις, Naples, "New City"), Syrakousai (Συράκουσαι, Syracuse), Akragas (Ἀκράγας, Agrigento), and Sybaris (Σύβαρις, Sibari). Other cities in Magna Graecia included Tarentum (Τάρας), Epizephyrian Locri (Λοκροὶ Ἐπιζεφύριοι), Rhegium (Ῥήγιον), Croton (Κρότων), Thurii (Θούριοι), Elea (Ἐλέα), Nola (Νῶλα), Syessa (Σύεσσα), Bari (Βάριον), and others.

After Pyrrhus of Epirus failed in his attempt to stop the spread of Roman hegemony in 282 BCE, the south fell under Roman domination and remained in such a position throughout the barbarian invasions (the Gladiator War is a notable suspension of imperial control). It was restored to Eastern Roman control in the 530s after the fall of Rome in the West in 476, and some form of imperial authority survived until the 1070s. Total East Roman rule was ended by the Lombards by Zotto's conquest in the final quarter of the 6th century.

Middle Ages[edit]

See also: Emirate of Sicily, Kingdom of Sicily, and Kingdom of Naples

Following the Gothic War (535–554), and until the arrival of the Normans, much of Southern Italy's destiny was linked to the fortunes of the Eastern Empire, even though Byzantine domination was challenged in the 9th century by the Lombards, who annexed the area of Cosenza to their Duchy of Benevento. Consequently, the Lombard and the Byzantine areas became influenced by Eastern monasticism and much of Southern Italy experienced a slow process of orientalisation in religious life (rites, cults and liturgy), which accompanied a spread of Eastern churches and monasteries that preserved and transmitted the Greek and Hellenistic tradition (the Cattolica monastery in Stilo is the most representative of these Byzantine monuments). From then to the Norman conquest of the 11th century, the south of the peninsula was constantly plunged into wars between the Byzantines, Lombardy, and the Islamic Caliphate. The latter established several Islamic states in southern Italy, such as the Emirate of Sicily and Emirate of Bari. Amalfi, an independent republic from the 7th century until 1075, and to a lesser extent Gaeta, Molfetta and Trani, rivalled other Italian maritime republics in their domestic prosperity and maritime importance.

Southern Italy in 1112.

In the 11th century, the Normans occupied all the Lombard and Byzantine possessions in Southern Italy, ending a millenium of imperial Roman rule in Italy, and eventually expelled the Muslims from Sicily. The Norman Kingdom of Sicily under Roger II was characterised by its competent governance, multi-ethnic nature and religious tolerance. Normans, Jews, Muslim Arabs, Byzantine Greeks, Lombards and "native" Sicilians lived in relative harmony.^[18] However, the Norman domination lasted only several decades before it formally ended in 1198 with the reign of Constance of Sicily, and was replaced by that of the Swabian Hohenstaufen dynasty.

Castel del Monte, built by Frederick II between 1240 and 1250 in Andria, Apulia.

In Sicily, Emperor Frederick II endorsed a deep reform of the laws culminating with the promulgation of the Constitutions of Melfi (1231, also known as Liber Augustalis), a collection of laws for his realm that was remarkable for its time and was a source of inspiration for a long time after.^[19] It made the Kingdom of Sicily a centralised state and established the primacy of written law. With relatively small modifications, the Liber Augustalis remained the basis of Sicilian law until 1819. His royal court in Palermo, from around 1220 to his death, saw the first use of a literary form of an Italo-Romance language, Sicilian, that had a significant influence on what was to become the modern Italian language. During this period, he also built the Castel del Monte, and in 1224, he founded the University of Naples, now called, after him, Università Federico II.^[20]

In 1266, conflict between the Hohenstaufen house and the Papacy led to Sicily's conquest by Charles I, Duke of Anjou. Opposition to French officialdom and taxation combined with incitement of rebellion by agents from the Byzantine Empire and the Crown of Aragon led to the Sicilian Vespers insurrection and successful invasion by king Peter III of Aragon in 1282. The resulting War of the Sicilian Vespers lasted until the Peace of Caltabellotta in 1302, dividing the old Kingdom of Sicily in two. The island of Sicily, called the "Kingdom of Sicily beyond the Lighthouse" or the Kingdom of Trinacria, went to Frederick III of the house of Aragon, who had been ruling it. The peninsular territories, contemporaneously called Kingdom of Sicily, but called Kingdom of Naples by modern scholarship, went to Charles II of the House of Anjou, who had likewise been ruling it. Thus, the peace was formal recognition of an uneasy status quo.^[21] Despite the king of Spain being able to seize both the two crowns starting from the 16th century, the administrations of the two halves of the Kingdom of Sicily remained separated until 1816, when they were reunited in the Kingdom of Two Sicilies.

The Kingdom of Sicily in 1154.

Early modern history[edit]

See also: Italian Wars and War of Spanish Succession

In 1442, however, Alfonso V conquered the Kingdom of Naples and unified Sicily and Naples once again as dependencies of the Crown of Aragon. At his death in 1458, the kingdom was again separated and Naples was inherited by Ferrante, Alfonso's illegitimate son. When Ferrante died in 1494, Charles VIII of France invaded Italy, using the Angevin claim to the throne of Naples, which his father had inherited on the death of King René's nephew in 1481, as a pretext, thus beginning the Italian Wars. Charles VIII expelled Alfonso II of Naples from Naples in 1495, but was soon forced to withdraw due to the support of Ferdinand II of Aragon for his cousin, Alfonso II's son Ferrantino. Ferrantino was restored to the throne, but died in 1496, and was succeeded by his uncle, Frederick IV. The French, however, did not give up their claim, and in 1501 agreed to a partition of the kingdom with Ferdinand of Aragon, who abandoned his cousin King Frederick. The deal soon fell through, however, and the Crown of Aragon and France resumed their war over the kingdom, ultimately resulting in an Aragonese victory leaving Ferdinand in control of the kingdom by 1504.

The kingdom continued to be a focus of dispute between France and Spain for the next several decades, but French efforts to gain control of it became feebler as the decades went on, and Spanish control was never genuinely endangered. The French finally abandoned their claims to the kingdom by the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis in 1559. With the Treaty of London (1557) the new client state of "Stato dei Presidi" (State of Presidi) was established and governed directly by Spain, as part of the Kingdom of Naples.

Castel Nuovo, Naples: initiated by the Anjou, it was heavily altered as it served as Spanish headquarters until the 18th century.

The administration of the Kingdom of Naples and Sicily, as well as the Duchy of Milan, was run by the Council of Italy. The island of Sardinia, that came to be under full Iberian sovereignty in 1409 at the fall of the last indigenous state, had been an integral part of the Council of Aragon instead and kept being as such until the first years of the XVIII° century, when Sardinia was ceded to Austria and eventually Savoy.

After the War of the Spanish Succession in the early 18th century, possession of the kingdom again changed hands. Under the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, Naples was given to Charles VI, the Holy Roman Emperor. He also gained control of Sicily in 1720, but Austrian rule did not last long. Both Naples and Sicily were conquered by a Spanish army during the War of the Polish Succession in 1734, and Charles, Duke of Parma, a younger son of King Philip V of Spain was installed as King of Naples and Sicily from 1735. When Charles inherited the Spanish throne from his older half-brother in 1759, he left Naples and Sicily to his younger son, Ferdinand IV. Despite the two kingdoms being in a personal union under the House of Bourbon from 1735 onwards, they remained constitutionally separated.