Godi, Fiorenza, poi che se’ sì grande,
che per mare e per terra batti l’ali,
e per lo ’nferno tuo nome si spande!

(Dante, Inferno, Canto XXVI)

The Americans

After Spain, I came to Florence, for a brief course. I’m staying in a monastery of benedictine nuns that rents rooms, located right at the edge of town. Wonderful place with a wonderful view. The only thing ruining it so far is a small group of young, loud, obnoxious American tourists staying here as well.

If I had my way, I would impose a moratorium of ten years for American tourists anywhere in Europe. Maybe a hundred years just in case, although it’s pretty unlikely that America as such will still exist in a hundred years.

I may sound prejudiced, but if it wasn’t for America, Europe would be not an Uncle Sam colony, the Middle East would not be constantly being bombed with its refugees ending up in Europe, and extreme liberal ideas would not kept being pushed everywhere.

Twice in my life I saw American tourists breaking spaghetti in half to cook it, under the horrified look of an Italian. I also saw once an American cooking spaghetti in a frying pan together with the vegetables and the sauce.

But it’s not that they commit such culinary heresies. It’s their attitude. Ignorance is forgivable, but Americans believe that they are right even when they are wrong. When an Italian points out their mistake, they don’t really accept that it is a mistake, or perhaps they don’t even understand it. They laugh and think that the Italians are oversensitive foodies.

They just cannot understand that things in other countries are done for a reason.

Americans will not drink tap water in Italy, or anywhere outside of the U.S. It’s unsafe, they say. But, outside of India and Pakistan, it’s probably in the U.S. where tap water is the most dangerous.

It’s not that it’s unclean. It’s not what they take away — it’s all that they put in. From fluoride to lithium to who knows what else, American tap water has more chemicals than the periodic table.

While in the U.S. water fluoridation has been ongoing since the 1960s, polluting our precious bodily fluids (under the excuse of fighting tooth decay), in Italy, tap water has never been fluoridated. Nevertheless, according to a recent report, Italian children have less cavities than their American counterparts.

What was the true motive for water fluoridation, then?

Who knows, but don’t ask an American. He still believes in the official stories of 9/11, JFK, Covid, the moon landing, and, of course, water fluoridation.

The Africans

There’s a park in Florence where African migrants hang around, loitering, listening to loud rap, selling drugs and counterfeit bags. There’s probably a similar park in most European cities nowadays.

In Barcelona, Latin Americans and Moroccans comprised most of the non-native population, but in Florence, after the American tourists, Africans seem to be the most visible foreign presence in the city. But, alas, unlike the former, the latter won’t go back to their countries as summer ends. Italy is stuck with them.

Of course, there are also other Africans who integrate into the formal economy and work as waiters, bus drivers, nurses, lifesavers, and so on, but still, each day a new boat arrives and there’s no room for all, so some overflow into the parks.

I mean, they are not dangerous, at least not so far, but they don’t seem to contribute much to the local economy, unless selling cheap counterfeit bags made by the Chinese counts as a contribution.

The Chinese

Which brings me to the Chinese. They are also numerous, but, being less loud than the Africans, they are not so noticed. They also concentrate in particular regions. It seems that Prato is almost half Chinese now. I wouldn’t know, I haven’t been there yet, but I can believe it.

The Chinese at least are industrious and don’t tend to idly hang around in parks. They are good at doing business, and they do it from morning to night. The Jews of Asia, they say, although that might be an unfair characterization for both sides.

It seems that a lot of “Italian” trinkets sold in souvenir shops, even if they say “made in Italy”, are made by the Chinese. In this case, Chinese migrants in Prato.

But I like the Chinese. Once, and I told the story here before, a Chinese migrant gave me a ride to my hotel when there were no longer taxis or other form of transportation in town, and wouldn’t even accept money for it. I don’t think an American tourist would have done that.

Also, I was confident enough to take a ride with a random Chinese migrant, but I don’t think I would if he was from any other nationality. Chinese and other Asians are trustworthy in that sense. I mean, I suppose that there are Chinese robbers, rapists, murderers or serial killers, but it’s not the first thing that comes to your mind.

The Italians

Now, first of all, let’s admit it, there is no such things as an “Italian people”. They don’t really exist. There’s Tuscans — subdivided in Florentines, Senese, Pisans, etc. — and Lombards, and Neapolitans, and Sicilians, and Sardinians, and so on.

Don’t tell me that all of those groups form a single, unified people, regardless of what Garibaldi said.

The Tuscans, and, in particular, the Florentines, are considered snobbish or arrogant, a bit like, say, the Parisians in France. “Hanno la puzza sotto il naso“, they say here. —they have their nose always turned up.

There might be something to it, even though I haven’t noticed it. Curzio Malaparte, himself a Tuscan from Prato, wrote in “Maledetti Toscani” that Tuscans are the smartest people in Italy and that they do not suffer fools gladly, and that makes them hated by all the other Italians.

That has not been my experience at all. If anything, the Tuscans I’ve met have been pretty kind, generous and even humble, very far from such stereotype.

(I do think that might be true of the people of Milan, though.).

The Liberal (Dis)Order

Like in Spain, the Italian birth rate is also collapsing. Feminist propaganda is also very present, almost as much as in Spain. Wherever there’s feminism and liberalism, there’s birth rate collapse. Of course, there are many other reasons for it, as the phenomenon is present today in most countries, not all liberal democracies, but feminism, late marriages (or no marriage), abortion and birth control certainly play a role. After all, it’s women the ones who have (or do not have) babies.

But the real problem of modern liberalism is simply that it doesn’t have an end or a goal — it just evolves to and further further radicalism, at the same time that it describes its critics as “radicals”.

For instance, “Pope” Francis recently excommunicated his critic Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, whom the media characterizes as “ultra-conservative”. But Viganò’s position is simply the same of any regular Catholic priest in 1962, prior to Vatican II. There’s nothing “radical” or “extreme” about it. It’s society, and the Church with it, which became more extreme, and continues to do so.

And remember when Meloni was characterized as “far-right”? That didn’t age well.

The other strange thing about the liberal order (some may call it the “new world order”) is how omnipresent it is. There is little room for variation. From increasing censorship in the name of “misinformation” to strange and possibly fake election results, it follows the same pattern of tricks everywhere.

And yet, also here in Florence as in Barcelona, collapse does not seem to be coming any time soon. The city, despite the heat in these infernal summer months — certainly an inspiration for Dante — is bustling with activity and tourists. Not just loud, obnoxious Americans, but also obnoxious Germans, obnoxious Australians, obnoxious French.

Dante wrote ironically that Florence’s fame grows even in Hell — in fact his Inferno is basically a list of famous florentines — and predicted that a great calamity sooner or later would strike the city as punishment for its many sins.

Well, I suppose we’re more or less in the same situation in the West as a whole. Punishment will come, that much is certain. But who knows exactly when?

We live in an age that, for the most part, doesn’t believe in miracles or in any form of transcendence from the material world.

Some believe in the miracles of “science” — although I suppose that has also taken a hit in the recent “Covid” years — but, other than that, I think most people simply accept, as modern “philosophers” say, and recent polls show, the idea of life as a meaningless existence that starts and ends with our material bodies.

And, sometimes, not even that. After all, for many, fetuses are not considered “living beings”, as they have not have yet started “life”, which is for us defined as the period from birth until death — and now “assisted dying” is becoming a thing.

We consider ourselves wiser or more knowledgeable than people from earlier periods, in particular those from medieval times, a period often dismissed as a “dark age”.

But perhaps that’s a limitation. “There are more things in Heaven and Earth”, says Shakespeare through Hamlet. And August Strindberg, in his “Blue Book“, said that modern materialists are “like deaf and blind people who are convinced that they are the only ones who can see.”

We think we see more than them, but, in fact, perhaps we see less.

In medieval times, for instance, there was not a clear separation between the material and the spiritual, the “real” and the magic, the “normal life” and miracles, Heaven and Earth.

Let’s talk, for instance, about Fina dei Ciardi.

Life and Death of Santa Fina

On March 12th, 1253, a young girl named Fina (possibly a nickname for Iosefina or Serafina, although no one knows for sure) died after five long years of suffering.

At only ten years of age, she had been struck with a disease that rendered her almost incapable of moving. Refusing a more comfortable bed, Fina dei Ciardi lied down on an oak board, and there she remained for the rest of her short life. While she was ill, she first lost her father, and then her mother also died in an accidental fall.

With her body full of sores and even, according to some, bitten by worms or rats that nested in the rotten wood, she seemed always peaceful, and she even comforted the visitors who came to see her.

One night, Saint Gregory appeared to her and predicted the date of her death, which came to take place in the aforementioned March 12th. She was only fifteen.

To us, modern people, the life and death of Santa Fina seems just a sad and meaningless tragedy, an almost grotesque story that we cannot understand.

Today, she could have avoided her five years of suffering and simply said her last goodbyes in a “suicide pod”, like those now common in Switzerland, the Netherlands and Canada — and maybe soon former Catholic France, too.

But it was not so back then. Back then, they believed in miracles.

Back then, just after Fina’s death, the people claimed that bells rang without no one touching them, and that violets started to bloom in places where they had never bloomed before, high up in the walls and the towers of San Gimignano, the small medieval town where she lived and she died.

Death of Santa Fina, by Ghirlandaio (1475)

San Gimignano today

San Gimignano is now like a living museum, almost a medieval theme park for American and British tourists who flock every summer to eat pizza and gelato and drink Chianti wine and spend the money from their pensions in the overpriced local markets and shops.

I came here to teach a brief workshop, having arrived just in time for the celebration of Santa Fina — who, by the way, was never officially canonized as a “Saint” by the Church but is a “beata vergine.”

I almost didn’t get to be here, in fact. I arrived late at night by train in the nearby town of Poggibonsi. I assumed I could find there a taxi or a bus from there to San Gimignano, where I had my booked apartment, about 15 km away.

But I found out that buses only operate until 7 pm, and all taxi services I called were “closed for the day”. My only remaining option was to walk (it would take two and a half hours, according to Google Maps, and that in the middle of light rain) or perhaps to sleep in the train station until the next day (there was already some hobo sleeping there, so at least I would have company.)

I started walking, but after a mile or so, I realized it wasn’t an easy task. It was very dark and the roads had barely room for cars, much less for pedestrians. I thought the risk of being run over was not negligible. It was all uphill, too. Finally, I entered into a local sushi restaurant, Miò Sushi. (If you’re ever in this region, visit it). I asked if they knew of any taxi service that was working at that time. They didn’t.

After asking me what I was going to do, and hearing the answer “no idea”, a young Chinese employee simply said, “I will take you there.” So he kindly interrupted his work to give me a ride.

I offered him the money that I would have paid for the taxi, but he refused it. He just asked that perhaps one day I visit their restaurant and leave a 5-star review, if I liked it. A kind soul, such as are rare these days, I suppose.

And that’s how I arrived to San Gimignano, just in time to sleep soundly and then see the celebration of Santa Fina at the local church on the very next morning.

(It was very beautiful, too).

Was it a new small miracle of Santa Fina? Or just a series of lucky and unlucky coincidences in a random universe?

Honestly, I don’t know. I was also born in this materialistic age that has amazing planes and computers and believes in “Artificial Intelligence”, but has a hard time believing in any kind of transcendence or supernatural event.

I don’t know what is “real” and what isn’t, nor if there is anything beyond our mortal coil. But, as Agent Mulder said, “I want to believe”. No, not in UFOs (that’s just another silly government psy-op), but in the idea that there is something else beyond what we can touch and see.

Who knows? Perhaps Santa Fina knew all the answers that we, modern people, are still struggling to figure out.