Dear Benedetto, no day shall erase you from the memory of time.
As long as I live, as long as we live, they too will live; for they are a part of us, as we remember them and as we shall speak of them. I keep hearing a voice whispering, grieve not for me. Remember the best times, the laughter the songs, the good life I lived while I was strong. Continue my heritage, continue traditions no matter how small. All of our stories are different so be not quick to judge, our struggles are different though our lives are entwined. My mind now at ease, my soul at rest and I do remember of how I truly was blessed.
Abbot Benedetto Scafi - This is a history of part of his life, he is a beloved member of Santopadre and a cherished ancestor. He was descended from the noble family “SCAFI” of Santopadre, already present on site since 1436, when an ancestor was a magistrate. He was abbot and author of the volume Historical News of Santopadre of 1871.
He was of liberal ideas, so much so that Garibaldi himself sent him a letter of thanks for sending him money for the Polish Insurgents 28 June 1863. This letter is mentioned in the number 188 on 11 July 1863 of Il Popolo d'Italia : "To the priest Benedetto Scafi Santopadre, Caprera June 1863. I received your money which I will send to the Polish insurgents." Meanwhile, a word of thanks, if the ugly parenthood of the priests resembled you, humanity would not be brutal and we would be in Rome. Your Giuseppe Garibaldi.
Don Benedetto had begged the Pope to abandon temporal power.
The town of Santopadre dedicated a street to him.
He, the "sought after" is the "Abbate" Don Benedetto Scafi, from a family that has always been Santopardrese. He studied literature at Tulliano di Arpino, philosophy and moral theology at the seminary of Sora, canon law in Rome. Ordained priest in 1829, he was given the responsibility of the church of San Folco.
In the restricted circle of the lovers of the history of his country, beyond his fellow citizens, of course, his name is known not only for the historical news of Santopadre, published in Sora at the print shop of Carlo Pagnanelli in 1871 and over a century later. 1979 and 1993, reproposed in anastatic reprint first by initiative of the municipal administration of his country and then by the provincial one of Frosinone, but also for being a priest of those who could be called progressives.
There is one of his speeches on the death penalty, for example, that deserves attention: "It is very ridiculous to hide from people with reserved killings the killing of the beasts, when it is exposed to the public eye and with solemn apparatus, the nefarious show of the killing of man!
"And in truth the Divin legislator in anticipating the Non Occides to all has perhaps made some exceptions to the Magistrate? And if the latter in his greatest coldness, to avenge the wrong of others, can give death to man; how can one expect that to his example, others in the heat of passion, and in revenge for an actual or presumed offense, do not give it equally?
"And then for so many centuries that the death penalty has lasted, have the same reasons for applying it ever been lacking? Have men become better and more mild to it, and not rather brutal and ferocious? "1
It was only these considerations, or some other of the same kind, that would all fall within the specific pastoral competence. Instead, it happens that Don Benedetto has no difficulty in going any further: "The mission of the law is to make man better, not to destroy him. Therefore respect for human life, sacred and inviolable, must be found before the others in the law itself. Which therefore frankly and highly I say, that those Codes that nevertheless maintain the scandalous and fatal spectacle of the death penalty, do not want to train the customs of the people, but, at least in the effect, to give them a greater deal of power.
"I would have wished (in honor of Catholic Religion) that the first to abolish capital punishment, not even in Italy, in the whole world, had been the Heads of Religion when for God's punishment they acted unhappily as King.
"No one would have hoped, indeed owed, better than they had to take their inspirations and their rules from the eternal code of righteousness and humanitarian charity, the Gospel. It is preceeded there - You will not kill - The loss of the friendship of God. "2
"But instead the Pontifical Court believed to pay respect to God when the men burned inhumanly burning on the stakes, notwithstanding that in the Gospel Jesus had clearly said:" It will be time for those who kill you believe they are honoring God; and they will treat you like that because they have never known either the father or me. And I told you these things, so that when you come that time you will remember that I have told you. "3
From here to an opening of credit for the new Italy, the step is short: "I have all the confidence, however, that what has not been done by theocratic Rome, will be done as soon as possible by Italian Rome." 4
According to Scafi "the Pontiff, or should never have accepted an earthly kingdom in imitation of the divine Head and Master Jesus Christ who had clearly demonstrated the separation that had to be between the storm and the spiritual when he said: Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what belongs to God - And who had said: My kingdom is not from here; and he confirmed it with the fact of his escape to the mountain when he realized that he wanted to proclaim him King.
"Or accepting it, the kingdom, acceptance should serve only to bring to fruition those holy evangelical maxims of perfect charity.
"But unhappily it was not so: and if the profane despots trampled only their subjects; the sacred despots trampled subjects and sovereigns.
"And when in the best of times many princes recognized the dignity of man, they slowed down their chains, the Papal Court reiterated them cruelly and duplicated.
"So with all justice it was said that the papal political regime not being (as for the evangelical maxims it should have been) the best of all the best, was therefore the worst among all the worst." 5
"Praise therefore to God that in the most marvelous ways he deigned to bring back things to his just and true principles with unexpected and tremendous punishment of those who opposed obstacles to the triumph of his divine mercy.
"Praise God who decreed the Italian Risorgimento making Mazzini precursor to prepare it; sending his Vicar Pius IX to start it; creating the sublime mind of Cavour to fertilize it, and using the good arm of the prodigal General Giuseppe Garibaldi to cement it.
"And even more solemn praise to God, who choosing to minister to his graces the glorious beloved King Vittorio Emanuele II, destined him to accomplish the long-awaited Italian Risorgimento, and to free his Church from the fatal nightmare of the temporal dominion that the kept oppressed and dejected.6
"So the fiat voluntas tua, sicut in coelo et in terra, that every priest or friar recites almanco fifteen times a day, is not less in them an oration with lips, than a manifested mensogna: dreaming and brigando impossible and certainly not longer lasting restoration of temporal domain; with promoting interventions, provoking wars and massacres, in open opposition to that same Gospel that with words and appearance they profess to profess; but that with facts all day they deny.
"God forgive and revive them!
"With the ridding of the storm by the church, and with the current political regime enforced in Europe, a large source of good is disclosed to the moralization of peoples. And to widen it more and more I would very much believe the creation of a Tribunal for merits and rewards, as it exists for crimes and penalties.
"That if the latter with the fear of the gastigo moves the man away from evil; that with the love of virtue calls him to good. "7
It could be objected that, in fact, it is easy to talk in this way. Maybe. We do not know, however, if such an accusation can be made to Don Benedetto Scafi. Which certainly did not send them to say how, for example, he tries this letter to Pope Pius IX, "also signed by others of the Clergy, and reported by the Giornale Il Popolo d'Italia at number 207 dated 28 July 1862", with which the Pope was invited to abandon the temporal power: "Most Holy Father. The Clergy of the Municipality of Santopadre, for the good of the Church, of Italy, of humanity, feels the duty to add its own to universal and common vows, and to implore your Holiness, Vicar of Jesus Christ, to abandon the World that temporal and worldly power, which (as it is written in the Gospel) the Divine Master with sayings demonstrated and with facts, disregarding the Head of a religion of peace, holy and pure; as when he protested that his reign was not the storm and I fell, when wanted for King, to flee to the mountain; when he ordered to return to Caesar, he is Caesar; and when he preached detachment from earthly goods. That if God (a punishment only of human pride) has for some time allowed and tolerated, it is now time that his mercy finally triumphs. May Your Holiness accept the voice of the people, which is the voice of God, and impart to the Clergy, who is its interpreter, the apostolic blessing. Santopadre 13 June 1862. Priest Benedetto Scafi-Priest Nicola Casciano-Priest Angelantonio Notargiacomo. "8
But Scafi had "contacts" also with Giuseppe Garibaldi, who writes Don Benedetto, "being pleased with my good will, he honored me with the following letter, also reported by the People of Italy in the number 188 of July 11, 1863": "To the Priest Benedetto Scafi - Santopadre. Caprera June 26, 1863. I received your money which I will send to the Polish police. In the meantime, have a word of thanks. If the ugly genie de 'priests resembled you, humanity would not be brutal, and we would be in Rome. Your Giuseppe Garibaldi. "9
Don Benedetto naturally rejoices when, on 20 September 1870, with the "breach of Porta Pia" the temporal power of the Church ends. "Oh! - I said then - could not live the worthy patriot of my country and friend, D. Giuseppe Margarita (died at 'January 16, 1848)! Which, because of the temporal domination of the Pontifical, could not fix faith, when in 1846 I told him as possible, and perhaps not so distant, the age of Italian Unity. It is true that he would have seen me persecuted by the police, by obliging me on 5 September 1849 to leave the day from Naples after a day of detention among political prisoners; and alluded to trustworthy; searched the house of my usual home in Santopadre on November 28, 1852, ruining all the papers and newspapers; and my Casina ai Vallimàmoli, on May 17, 1859. But he would have seen the events of 1859, 1860, 1866 and in preference among all those of September 20, 1870, who were making my correct presentiments. "10
It can not be forgotten that on the road of Don Benedetto there is, for almost a quarter of a century, from 1838 to 1862, a character not only with a strong personality - Crescenzo Marsella in I Vescovi Sora writes that "he would have arrested his father if he had seen him escape from prison and would have handcuffed his mother if he had surprised her in the infraction of a law" - but also closely linked with the Bourbon King Ferdinand II: the Bishop Giuseppe Montieri11. So if a certain day the "Abbate" of Santopadre is suspended a divinis or even ends up in jail, albeit for a short time, and is, however, persecuted as "reliable", evidently his political sympathies he must have already manifested in times not suspicious, well aware of the risks that ran.
The suspension a divinis is from 1844 and the official cause that provokes it has all the air of the classic drop in the already full vessel: when in that year the realization of the rotatable road from Santopadre to Arpino is undertaken on the project of architect Francesco Coccoli , given the lack of funds, Don Benedetto, he recounts, "to facilitate and save the expenses of a Chief Engineer and Surveyors at work in economics, I take on myself all the responsibility of management and supervision and from dawn in the morning at nightfall I am tirelessly at the place of labor, whether it was a clear or rainy day, wet or dry, freezing or extinguishing. "
"But a work so beautiful," continues Scafi, "could not be without opponents and one, indeed the only one, was the Second Elected, that Officer that then replaced the Mayor in case of impediment. He began to appeal against the Mayor himself who was working; but he ended up being left destitute by the Office of Elected.
"This dishonor, however, healed and believed that the only way to avert the work of the new road would be to remove me, get from Bishop Montieri my suspension from the Mass. But I who did not want to work so holy had abandoned themselves, as it would certainly have happened, I did not take any thought of suspension until I had opened, along the Santopadrese territory, the whole trail in the length of over three kilometers ... "
In 1848 Scafi would have reacted to the injustice he had suffered by writing a harsh satire against Montieri's politics and work. The satire, printed in Sora in 1866, had a certain diffusion, particularly among all those (and there were many) who had suffered the implacable rigor of Montieri.
In his News, Benedetto Scafi quotes Bishop Montieri only in a couple of occasions: a few lines, but with subtle wit, and almost a profile emerges. Thus, when he speaks of the costume of the peasant women of Santopadre, he states that "in 1840 Bishop Montieri added the handkerchief, or fisciù, which covers from the neck to the chest"; so, when he speaks of the earthquakes that ravaged the country, he writes that "another tremor is famous not for the effect - which is similar to the others - but for the coincidence of the coming in the Diocese of the new Bishop Monsignor Montieri, which took place the day November 1, 1838, at the same time that he placed the foot for the first time. The event was held of ill luck and really his bad system with which, wanting to remove the scandals, multiplied immensely, it increased the belief. "
In 1871, when he was sixty-five years old, Scafi wrote Santopadre's Historical News in which he was a punctual researcher and attentive observer, giving a complete picture of the country as it was in its time (institutions, economy, places of worship, environment, art , traditions) and also reporting many historical and archaeological information.
Don Benedetto Scafi died December 26, 1879. In the preface to the first reprint of his book by the municipal administration of Santopadre on the centenary of the author's death, the mayor of the time, Rocco Forte, highlights, among other things, "the a human and progressive charge, which shines through the whole work of "Scafi and it is said" convinced that if He could, for a moment, return among us, he would finally be satisfied with His desire for the progress and the civilization of all ".
As long as I live, as long as we live, they too will live; for they are a part of us, as we remember them and as we shall speak of them. I keep hearing a voice whispering, grieve not for me. Remember the best times, the laughter the songs, the good life I lived while I was strong. Continue my heritage, continue traditions no matter how small. All of our stories are different so be not quick to judge, our struggles are different though our lives are entwined. My mind now at ease, my soul at rest and I do remember of how I truly was blessed.
Abbot Benedetto Scafi - This is a history of part of his life, he is a beloved member of Santopadre and a cherished ancestor. He was descended from the noble family “SCAFI” of Santopadre, already present on site since 1436, when an ancestor was a magistrate. He was abbot and author of the volume Historical News of Santopadre of 1871.
He was of liberal ideas, so much so that Garibaldi himself sent him a letter of thanks for sending him money for the Polish Insurgents 28 June 1863. This letter is mentioned in the number 188 on 11 July 1863 of Il Popolo d'Italia : "To the priest Benedetto Scafi Santopadre, Caprera June 1863. I received your money which I will send to the Polish insurgents." Meanwhile, a word of thanks, if the ugly parenthood of the priests resembled you, humanity would not be brutal and we would be in Rome. Your Giuseppe Garibaldi.
Don Benedetto had begged the Pope to abandon temporal power.
The town of Santopadre dedicated a street to him.
He, the "sought after" is the "Abbate" Don Benedetto Scafi, from a family that has always been Santopardrese. He studied literature at Tulliano di Arpino, philosophy and moral theology at the seminary of Sora, canon law in Rome. Ordained priest in 1829, he was given the responsibility of the church of San Folco.
In the restricted circle of the lovers of the history of his country, beyond his fellow citizens, of course, his name is known not only for the historical news of Santopadre, published in Sora at the print shop of Carlo Pagnanelli in 1871 and over a century later. 1979 and 1993, reproposed in anastatic reprint first by initiative of the municipal administration of his country and then by the provincial one of Frosinone, but also for being a priest of those who could be called progressives.
There is one of his speeches on the death penalty, for example, that deserves attention: "It is very ridiculous to hide from people with reserved killings the killing of the beasts, when it is exposed to the public eye and with solemn apparatus, the nefarious show of the killing of man!
"And in truth the Divin legislator in anticipating the Non Occides to all has perhaps made some exceptions to the Magistrate? And if the latter in his greatest coldness, to avenge the wrong of others, can give death to man; how can one expect that to his example, others in the heat of passion, and in revenge for an actual or presumed offense, do not give it equally?
"And then for so many centuries that the death penalty has lasted, have the same reasons for applying it ever been lacking? Have men become better and more mild to it, and not rather brutal and ferocious? "1
It was only these considerations, or some other of the same kind, that would all fall within the specific pastoral competence. Instead, it happens that Don Benedetto has no difficulty in going any further: "The mission of the law is to make man better, not to destroy him. Therefore respect for human life, sacred and inviolable, must be found before the others in the law itself. Which therefore frankly and highly I say, that those Codes that nevertheless maintain the scandalous and fatal spectacle of the death penalty, do not want to train the customs of the people, but, at least in the effect, to give them a greater deal of power.
"I would have wished (in honor of Catholic Religion) that the first to abolish capital punishment, not even in Italy, in the whole world, had been the Heads of Religion when for God's punishment they acted unhappily as King.
"No one would have hoped, indeed owed, better than they had to take their inspirations and their rules from the eternal code of righteousness and humanitarian charity, the Gospel. It is preceeded there - You will not kill - The loss of the friendship of God. "2
"But instead the Pontifical Court believed to pay respect to God when the men burned inhumanly burning on the stakes, notwithstanding that in the Gospel Jesus had clearly said:" It will be time for those who kill you believe they are honoring God; and they will treat you like that because they have never known either the father or me. And I told you these things, so that when you come that time you will remember that I have told you. "3
From here to an opening of credit for the new Italy, the step is short: "I have all the confidence, however, that what has not been done by theocratic Rome, will be done as soon as possible by Italian Rome." 4
According to Scafi "the Pontiff, or should never have accepted an earthly kingdom in imitation of the divine Head and Master Jesus Christ who had clearly demonstrated the separation that had to be between the storm and the spiritual when he said: Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what belongs to God - And who had said: My kingdom is not from here; and he confirmed it with the fact of his escape to the mountain when he realized that he wanted to proclaim him King.
"Or accepting it, the kingdom, acceptance should serve only to bring to fruition those holy evangelical maxims of perfect charity.
"But unhappily it was not so: and if the profane despots trampled only their subjects; the sacred despots trampled subjects and sovereigns.
"And when in the best of times many princes recognized the dignity of man, they slowed down their chains, the Papal Court reiterated them cruelly and duplicated.
"So with all justice it was said that the papal political regime not being (as for the evangelical maxims it should have been) the best of all the best, was therefore the worst among all the worst." 5
"Praise therefore to God that in the most marvelous ways he deigned to bring back things to his just and true principles with unexpected and tremendous punishment of those who opposed obstacles to the triumph of his divine mercy.
"Praise God who decreed the Italian Risorgimento making Mazzini precursor to prepare it; sending his Vicar Pius IX to start it; creating the sublime mind of Cavour to fertilize it, and using the good arm of the prodigal General Giuseppe Garibaldi to cement it.
"And even more solemn praise to God, who choosing to minister to his graces the glorious beloved King Vittorio Emanuele II, destined him to accomplish the long-awaited Italian Risorgimento, and to free his Church from the fatal nightmare of the temporal dominion that the kept oppressed and dejected.6
"So the fiat voluntas tua, sicut in coelo et in terra, that every priest or friar recites almanco fifteen times a day, is not less in them an oration with lips, than a manifested mensogna: dreaming and brigando impossible and certainly not longer lasting restoration of temporal domain; with promoting interventions, provoking wars and massacres, in open opposition to that same Gospel that with words and appearance they profess to profess; but that with facts all day they deny.
"God forgive and revive them!
"With the ridding of the storm by the church, and with the current political regime enforced in Europe, a large source of good is disclosed to the moralization of peoples. And to widen it more and more I would very much believe the creation of a Tribunal for merits and rewards, as it exists for crimes and penalties.
"That if the latter with the fear of the gastigo moves the man away from evil; that with the love of virtue calls him to good. "7
It could be objected that, in fact, it is easy to talk in this way. Maybe. We do not know, however, if such an accusation can be made to Don Benedetto Scafi. Which certainly did not send them to say how, for example, he tries this letter to Pope Pius IX, "also signed by others of the Clergy, and reported by the Giornale Il Popolo d'Italia at number 207 dated 28 July 1862", with which the Pope was invited to abandon the temporal power: "Most Holy Father. The Clergy of the Municipality of Santopadre, for the good of the Church, of Italy, of humanity, feels the duty to add its own to universal and common vows, and to implore your Holiness, Vicar of Jesus Christ, to abandon the World that temporal and worldly power, which (as it is written in the Gospel) the Divine Master with sayings demonstrated and with facts, disregarding the Head of a religion of peace, holy and pure; as when he protested that his reign was not the storm and I fell, when wanted for King, to flee to the mountain; when he ordered to return to Caesar, he is Caesar; and when he preached detachment from earthly goods. That if God (a punishment only of human pride) has for some time allowed and tolerated, it is now time that his mercy finally triumphs. May Your Holiness accept the voice of the people, which is the voice of God, and impart to the Clergy, who is its interpreter, the apostolic blessing. Santopadre 13 June 1862. Priest Benedetto Scafi-Priest Nicola Casciano-Priest Angelantonio Notargiacomo. "8
But Scafi had "contacts" also with Giuseppe Garibaldi, who writes Don Benedetto, "being pleased with my good will, he honored me with the following letter, also reported by the People of Italy in the number 188 of July 11, 1863": "To the Priest Benedetto Scafi - Santopadre. Caprera June 26, 1863. I received your money which I will send to the Polish police. In the meantime, have a word of thanks. If the ugly genie de 'priests resembled you, humanity would not be brutal, and we would be in Rome. Your Giuseppe Garibaldi. "9
Don Benedetto naturally rejoices when, on 20 September 1870, with the "breach of Porta Pia" the temporal power of the Church ends. "Oh! - I said then - could not live the worthy patriot of my country and friend, D. Giuseppe Margarita (died at 'January 16, 1848)! Which, because of the temporal domination of the Pontifical, could not fix faith, when in 1846 I told him as possible, and perhaps not so distant, the age of Italian Unity. It is true that he would have seen me persecuted by the police, by obliging me on 5 September 1849 to leave the day from Naples after a day of detention among political prisoners; and alluded to trustworthy; searched the house of my usual home in Santopadre on November 28, 1852, ruining all the papers and newspapers; and my Casina ai Vallimàmoli, on May 17, 1859. But he would have seen the events of 1859, 1860, 1866 and in preference among all those of September 20, 1870, who were making my correct presentiments. "10
It can not be forgotten that on the road of Don Benedetto there is, for almost a quarter of a century, from 1838 to 1862, a character not only with a strong personality - Crescenzo Marsella in I Vescovi Sora writes that "he would have arrested his father if he had seen him escape from prison and would have handcuffed his mother if he had surprised her in the infraction of a law" - but also closely linked with the Bourbon King Ferdinand II: the Bishop Giuseppe Montieri11. So if a certain day the "Abbate" of Santopadre is suspended a divinis or even ends up in jail, albeit for a short time, and is, however, persecuted as "reliable", evidently his political sympathies he must have already manifested in times not suspicious, well aware of the risks that ran.
The suspension a divinis is from 1844 and the official cause that provokes it has all the air of the classic drop in the already full vessel: when in that year the realization of the rotatable road from Santopadre to Arpino is undertaken on the project of architect Francesco Coccoli , given the lack of funds, Don Benedetto, he recounts, "to facilitate and save the expenses of a Chief Engineer and Surveyors at work in economics, I take on myself all the responsibility of management and supervision and from dawn in the morning at nightfall I am tirelessly at the place of labor, whether it was a clear or rainy day, wet or dry, freezing or extinguishing. "
"But a work so beautiful," continues Scafi, "could not be without opponents and one, indeed the only one, was the Second Elected, that Officer that then replaced the Mayor in case of impediment. He began to appeal against the Mayor himself who was working; but he ended up being left destitute by the Office of Elected.
"This dishonor, however, healed and believed that the only way to avert the work of the new road would be to remove me, get from Bishop Montieri my suspension from the Mass. But I who did not want to work so holy had abandoned themselves, as it would certainly have happened, I did not take any thought of suspension until I had opened, along the Santopadrese territory, the whole trail in the length of over three kilometers ... "
In 1848 Scafi would have reacted to the injustice he had suffered by writing a harsh satire against Montieri's politics and work. The satire, printed in Sora in 1866, had a certain diffusion, particularly among all those (and there were many) who had suffered the implacable rigor of Montieri.
In his News, Benedetto Scafi quotes Bishop Montieri only in a couple of occasions: a few lines, but with subtle wit, and almost a profile emerges. Thus, when he speaks of the costume of the peasant women of Santopadre, he states that "in 1840 Bishop Montieri added the handkerchief, or fisciù, which covers from the neck to the chest"; so, when he speaks of the earthquakes that ravaged the country, he writes that "another tremor is famous not for the effect - which is similar to the others - but for the coincidence of the coming in the Diocese of the new Bishop Monsignor Montieri, which took place the day November 1, 1838, at the same time that he placed the foot for the first time. The event was held of ill luck and really his bad system with which, wanting to remove the scandals, multiplied immensely, it increased the belief. "
In 1871, when he was sixty-five years old, Scafi wrote Santopadre's Historical News in which he was a punctual researcher and attentive observer, giving a complete picture of the country as it was in its time (institutions, economy, places of worship, environment, art , traditions) and also reporting many historical and archaeological information.
Don Benedetto Scafi died December 26, 1879. In the preface to the first reprint of his book by the municipal administration of Santopadre on the centenary of the author's death, the mayor of the time, Rocco Forte, highlights, among other things, "the a human and progressive charge, which shines through the whole work of "Scafi and it is said" convinced that if He could, for a moment, return among us, he would finally be satisfied with His desire for the progress and the civilization of all ".
Dear Benedetto, no day shall erase you from the memory of time.
As long as I live, as long as we live, they too will live; for they are a part of us, as we remember them and as we shall speak of them. I keep hearing a voice whispering, grieve not for me. Remember the best times, the laughter the songs, the good life I lived while I was strong. Continue my heritage, continue traditions no matter how small. All of our stories are different so be not quick to judge, our struggles are different though our lives are entwined. My mind now at ease, my soul at rest and I do remember of how I truly was blessed.
Abbot Benedetto Scafi - This is a history of part of his life, he is a beloved member of Santopadre and a cherished ancestor. He was descended from the noble family “SCAFI” of Santopadre, already present on site since 1436, when an ancestor was a magistrate. He was abbot and author of the volume Historical News of Santopadre of 1871.
He was of liberal ideas, so much so that Garibaldi himself sent him a letter of thanks for sending him money for the Polish Insurgents 28 June 1863. This letter is mentioned in the number 188 on 11 July 1863 of Il Popolo d'Italia : "To the priest Benedetto Scafi Santopadre, Caprera June 1863. I received your money which I will send to the Polish insurgents." Meanwhile, a word of thanks, if the ugly parenthood of the priests resembled you, humanity would not be brutal and we would be in Rome. Your Giuseppe Garibaldi.
Don Benedetto had begged the Pope to abandon temporal power.
The town of Santopadre dedicated a street to him.
He, the "sought after" is the "Abbate" Don Benedetto Scafi, from a family that has always been Santopardrese. He studied literature at Tulliano di Arpino, philosophy and moral theology at the seminary of Sora, canon law in Rome. Ordained priest in 1829, he was given the responsibility of the church of San Folco.
In the restricted circle of the lovers of the history of his country, beyond his fellow citizens, of course, his name is known not only for the historical news of Santopadre, published in Sora at the print shop of Carlo Pagnanelli in 1871 and over a century later. 1979 and 1993, reproposed in anastatic reprint first by initiative of the municipal administration of his country and then by the provincial one of Frosinone, but also for being a priest of those who could be called progressives.
There is one of his speeches on the death penalty, for example, that deserves attention: "It is very ridiculous to hide from people with reserved killings the killing of the beasts, when it is exposed to the public eye and with solemn apparatus, the nefarious show of the killing of man!
"And in truth the Divin legislator in anticipating the Non Occides to all has perhaps made some exceptions to the Magistrate? And if the latter in his greatest coldness, to avenge the wrong of others, can give death to man; how can one expect that to his example, others in the heat of passion, and in revenge for an actual or presumed offense, do not give it equally?
"And then for so many centuries that the death penalty has lasted, have the same reasons for applying it ever been lacking? Have men become better and more mild to it, and not rather brutal and ferocious? "1
It was only these considerations, or some other of the same kind, that would all fall within the specific pastoral competence. Instead, it happens that Don Benedetto has no difficulty in going any further: "The mission of the law is to make man better, not to destroy him. Therefore respect for human life, sacred and inviolable, must be found before the others in the law itself. Which therefore frankly and highly I say, that those Codes that nevertheless maintain the scandalous and fatal spectacle of the death penalty, do not want to train the customs of the people, but, at least in the effect, to give them a greater deal of power.
"I would have wished (in honor of Catholic Religion) that the first to abolish capital punishment, not even in Italy, in the whole world, had been the Heads of Religion when for God's punishment they acted unhappily as King.
"No one would have hoped, indeed owed, better than they had to take their inspirations and their rules from the eternal code of righteousness and humanitarian charity, the Gospel. It is preceeded there - You will not kill - The loss of the friendship of God. "2
"But instead the Pontifical Court believed to pay respect to God when the men burned inhumanly burning on the stakes, notwithstanding that in the Gospel Jesus had clearly said:" It will be time for those who kill you believe they are honoring God; and they will treat you like that because they have never known either the father or me. And I told you these things, so that when you come that time you will remember that I have told you. "3
From here to an opening of credit for the new Italy, the step is short: "I have all the confidence, however, that what has not been done by theocratic Rome, will be done as soon as possible by Italian Rome." 4
According to Scafi "the Pontiff, or should never have accepted an earthly kingdom in imitation of the divine Head and Master Jesus Christ who had clearly demonstrated the separation that had to be between the storm and the spiritual when he said: Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what belongs to God - And who had said: My kingdom is not from here; and he confirmed it with the fact of his escape to the mountain when he realized that he wanted to proclaim him King.
"Or accepting it, the kingdom, acceptance should serve only to bring to fruition those holy evangelical maxims of perfect charity.
"But unhappily it was not so: and if the profane despots trampled only their subjects; the sacred despots trampled subjects and sovereigns.
"And when in the best of times many princes recognized the dignity of man, they slowed down their chains, the Papal Court reiterated them cruelly and duplicated.
"So with all justice it was said that the papal political regime not being (as for the evangelical maxims it should have been) the best of all the best, was therefore the worst among all the worst." 5
"Praise therefore to God that in the most marvelous ways he deigned to bring back things to his just and true principles with unexpected and tremendous punishment of those who opposed obstacles to the triumph of his divine mercy.
"Praise God who decreed the Italian Risorgimento making Mazzini precursor to prepare it; sending his Vicar Pius IX to start it; creating the sublime mind of Cavour to fertilize it, and using the good arm of the prodigal General Giuseppe Garibaldi to cement it.
"And even more solemn praise to God, who choosing to minister to his graces the glorious beloved King Vittorio Emanuele II, destined him to accomplish the long-awaited Italian Risorgimento, and to free his Church from the fatal nightmare of the temporal dominion that the kept oppressed and dejected.6
"So the fiat voluntas tua, sicut in coelo et in terra, that every priest or friar recites almanco fifteen times a day, is not less in them an oration with lips, than a manifested mensogna: dreaming and brigando impossible and certainly not longer lasting restoration of temporal domain; with promoting interventions, provoking wars and massacres, in open opposition to that same Gospel that with words and appearance they profess to profess; but that with facts all day they deny.
"God forgive and revive them!
"With the ridding of the storm by the church, and with the current political regime enforced in Europe, a large source of good is disclosed to the moralization of peoples. And to widen it more and more I would very much believe the creation of a Tribunal for merits and rewards, as it exists for crimes and penalties.
"That if the latter with the fear of the gastigo moves the man away from evil; that with the love of virtue calls him to good. "7
It could be objected that, in fact, it is easy to talk in this way. Maybe. We do not know, however, if such an accusation can be made to Don Benedetto Scafi. Which certainly did not send them to say how, for example, he tries this letter to Pope Pius IX, "also signed by others of the Clergy, and reported by the Giornale Il Popolo d'Italia at number 207 dated 28 July 1862", with which the Pope was invited to abandon the temporal power: "Most Holy Father. The Clergy of the Municipality of Santopadre, for the good of the Church, of Italy, of humanity, feels the duty to add its own to universal and common vows, and to implore your Holiness, Vicar of Jesus Christ, to abandon the World that temporal and worldly power, which (as it is written in the Gospel) the Divine Master with sayings demonstrated and with facts, disregarding the Head of a religion of peace, holy and pure; as when he protested that his reign was not the storm and I fell, when wanted for King, to flee to the mountain; when he ordered to return to Caesar, he is Caesar; and when he preached detachment from earthly goods. That if God (a punishment only of human pride) has for some time allowed and tolerated, it is now time that his mercy finally triumphs. May Your Holiness accept the voice of the people, which is the voice of God, and impart to the Clergy, who is its interpreter, the apostolic blessing. Santopadre 13 June 1862. Priest Benedetto Scafi-Priest Nicola Casciano-Priest Angelantonio Notargiacomo. "8
But Scafi had "contacts" also with Giuseppe Garibaldi, who writes Don Benedetto, "being pleased with my good will, he honored me with the following letter, also reported by the People of Italy in the number 188 of July 11, 1863": "To the Priest Benedetto Scafi - Santopadre. Caprera June 26, 1863. I received your money which I will send to the Polish police. In the meantime, have a word of thanks. If the ugly genie de 'priests resembled you, humanity would not be brutal, and we would be in Rome. Your Giuseppe Garibaldi. "9
Don Benedetto naturally rejoices when, on 20 September 1870, with the "breach of Porta Pia" the temporal power of the Church ends. "Oh! - I said then - could not live the worthy patriot of my country and friend, D. Giuseppe Margarita (died at 'January 16, 1848)! Which, because of the temporal domination of the Pontifical, could not fix faith, when in 1846 I told him as possible, and perhaps not so distant, the age of Italian Unity. It is true that he would have seen me persecuted by the police, by obliging me on 5 September 1849 to leave the day from Naples after a day of detention among political prisoners; and alluded to trustworthy; searched the house of my usual home in Santopadre on November 28, 1852, ruining all the papers and newspapers; and my Casina ai Vallimàmoli, on May 17, 1859. But he would have seen the events of 1859, 1860, 1866 and in preference among all those of September 20, 1870, who were making my correct presentiments. "10
It can not be forgotten that on the road of Don Benedetto there is, for almost a quarter of a century, from 1838 to 1862, a character not only with a strong personality - Crescenzo Marsella in I Vescovi Sora writes that "he would have arrested his father if he had seen him escape from prison and would have handcuffed his mother if he had surprised her in the infraction of a law" - but also closely linked with the Bourbon King Ferdinand II: the Bishop Giuseppe Montieri11. So if a certain day the "Abbate" of Santopadre is suspended a divinis or even ends up in jail, albeit for a short time, and is, however, persecuted as "reliable", evidently his political sympathies he must have already manifested in times not suspicious, well aware of the risks that ran.
The suspension a divinis is from 1844 and the official cause that provokes it has all the air of the classic drop in the already full vessel: when in that year the realization of the rotatable road from Santopadre to Arpino is undertaken on the project of architect Francesco Coccoli , given the lack of funds, Don Benedetto, he recounts, "to facilitate and save the expenses of a Chief Engineer and Surveyors at work in economics, I take on myself all the responsibility of management and supervision and from dawn in the morning at nightfall I am tirelessly at the place of labor, whether it was a clear or rainy day, wet or dry, freezing or extinguishing. "
"But a work so beautiful," continues Scafi, "could not be without opponents and one, indeed the only one, was the Second Elected, that Officer that then replaced the Mayor in case of impediment. He began to appeal against the Mayor himself who was working; but he ended up being left destitute by the Office of Elected.
"This dishonor, however, healed and believed that the only way to avert the work of the new road would be to remove me, get from Bishop Montieri my suspension from the Mass. But I who did not want to work so holy had abandoned themselves, as it would certainly have happened, I did not take any thought of suspension until I had opened, along the Santopadrese territory, the whole trail in the length of over three kilometers ... "
In 1848 Scafi would have reacted to the injustice he had suffered by writing a harsh satire against Montieri's politics and work. The satire, printed in Sora in 1866, had a certain diffusion, particularly among all those (and there were many) who had suffered the implacable rigor of Montieri.
In his News, Benedetto Scafi quotes Bishop Montieri only in a couple of occasions: a few lines, but with subtle wit, and almost a profile emerges. Thus, when he speaks of the costume of the peasant women of Santopadre, he states that "in 1840 Bishop Montieri added the handkerchief, or fisciù, which covers from the neck to the chest"; so, when he speaks of the earthquakes that ravaged the country, he writes that "another tremor is famous not for the effect - which is similar to the others - but for the coincidence of the coming in the Diocese of the new Bishop Monsignor Montieri, which took place the day November 1, 1838, at the same time that he placed the foot for the first time. The event was held of ill luck and really his bad system with which, wanting to remove the scandals, multiplied immensely, it increased the belief. "
In 1871, when he was sixty-five years old, Scafi wrote Santopadre's Historical News in which he was a punctual researcher and attentive observer, giving a complete picture of the country as it was in its time (institutions, economy, places of worship, environment, art , traditions) and also reporting many historical and archaeological information.
Don Benedetto Scafi died December 26, 1879. In the preface to the first reprint of his book by the municipal administration of Santopadre on the centenary of the author's death, the mayor of the time, Rocco Forte, highlights, among other things, "the a human and progressive charge, which shines through the whole work of "Scafi and it is said" convinced that if He could, for a moment, return among us, he would finally be satisfied with His desire for the progress and the civilization of all ".
As long as I live, as long as we live, they too will live; for they are a part of us, as we remember them and as we shall speak of them. I keep hearing a voice whispering, grieve not for me. Remember the best times, the laughter the songs, the good life I lived while I was strong. Continue my heritage, continue traditions no matter how small. All of our stories are different so be not quick to judge, our struggles are different though our lives are entwined. My mind now at ease, my soul at rest and I do remember of how I truly was blessed.
Abbot Benedetto Scafi - This is a history of part of his life, he is a beloved member of Santopadre and a cherished ancestor. He was descended from the noble family “SCAFI” of Santopadre, already present on site since 1436, when an ancestor was a magistrate. He was abbot and author of the volume Historical News of Santopadre of 1871.
He was of liberal ideas, so much so that Garibaldi himself sent him a letter of thanks for sending him money for the Polish Insurgents 28 June 1863. This letter is mentioned in the number 188 on 11 July 1863 of Il Popolo d'Italia : "To the priest Benedetto Scafi Santopadre, Caprera June 1863. I received your money which I will send to the Polish insurgents." Meanwhile, a word of thanks, if the ugly parenthood of the priests resembled you, humanity would not be brutal and we would be in Rome. Your Giuseppe Garibaldi.
Don Benedetto had begged the Pope to abandon temporal power.
The town of Santopadre dedicated a street to him.
He, the "sought after" is the "Abbate" Don Benedetto Scafi, from a family that has always been Santopardrese. He studied literature at Tulliano di Arpino, philosophy and moral theology at the seminary of Sora, canon law in Rome. Ordained priest in 1829, he was given the responsibility of the church of San Folco.
In the restricted circle of the lovers of the history of his country, beyond his fellow citizens, of course, his name is known not only for the historical news of Santopadre, published in Sora at the print shop of Carlo Pagnanelli in 1871 and over a century later. 1979 and 1993, reproposed in anastatic reprint first by initiative of the municipal administration of his country and then by the provincial one of Frosinone, but also for being a priest of those who could be called progressives.
There is one of his speeches on the death penalty, for example, that deserves attention: "It is very ridiculous to hide from people with reserved killings the killing of the beasts, when it is exposed to the public eye and with solemn apparatus, the nefarious show of the killing of man!
"And in truth the Divin legislator in anticipating the Non Occides to all has perhaps made some exceptions to the Magistrate? And if the latter in his greatest coldness, to avenge the wrong of others, can give death to man; how can one expect that to his example, others in the heat of passion, and in revenge for an actual or presumed offense, do not give it equally?
"And then for so many centuries that the death penalty has lasted, have the same reasons for applying it ever been lacking? Have men become better and more mild to it, and not rather brutal and ferocious? "1
It was only these considerations, or some other of the same kind, that would all fall within the specific pastoral competence. Instead, it happens that Don Benedetto has no difficulty in going any further: "The mission of the law is to make man better, not to destroy him. Therefore respect for human life, sacred and inviolable, must be found before the others in the law itself. Which therefore frankly and highly I say, that those Codes that nevertheless maintain the scandalous and fatal spectacle of the death penalty, do not want to train the customs of the people, but, at least in the effect, to give them a greater deal of power.
"I would have wished (in honor of Catholic Religion) that the first to abolish capital punishment, not even in Italy, in the whole world, had been the Heads of Religion when for God's punishment they acted unhappily as King.
"No one would have hoped, indeed owed, better than they had to take their inspirations and their rules from the eternal code of righteousness and humanitarian charity, the Gospel. It is preceeded there - You will not kill - The loss of the friendship of God. "2
"But instead the Pontifical Court believed to pay respect to God when the men burned inhumanly burning on the stakes, notwithstanding that in the Gospel Jesus had clearly said:" It will be time for those who kill you believe they are honoring God; and they will treat you like that because they have never known either the father or me. And I told you these things, so that when you come that time you will remember that I have told you. "3
From here to an opening of credit for the new Italy, the step is short: "I have all the confidence, however, that what has not been done by theocratic Rome, will be done as soon as possible by Italian Rome." 4
According to Scafi "the Pontiff, or should never have accepted an earthly kingdom in imitation of the divine Head and Master Jesus Christ who had clearly demonstrated the separation that had to be between the storm and the spiritual when he said: Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what belongs to God - And who had said: My kingdom is not from here; and he confirmed it with the fact of his escape to the mountain when he realized that he wanted to proclaim him King.
"Or accepting it, the kingdom, acceptance should serve only to bring to fruition those holy evangelical maxims of perfect charity.
"But unhappily it was not so: and if the profane despots trampled only their subjects; the sacred despots trampled subjects and sovereigns.
"And when in the best of times many princes recognized the dignity of man, they slowed down their chains, the Papal Court reiterated them cruelly and duplicated.
"So with all justice it was said that the papal political regime not being (as for the evangelical maxims it should have been) the best of all the best, was therefore the worst among all the worst." 5
"Praise therefore to God that in the most marvelous ways he deigned to bring back things to his just and true principles with unexpected and tremendous punishment of those who opposed obstacles to the triumph of his divine mercy.
"Praise God who decreed the Italian Risorgimento making Mazzini precursor to prepare it; sending his Vicar Pius IX to start it; creating the sublime mind of Cavour to fertilize it, and using the good arm of the prodigal General Giuseppe Garibaldi to cement it.
"And even more solemn praise to God, who choosing to minister to his graces the glorious beloved King Vittorio Emanuele II, destined him to accomplish the long-awaited Italian Risorgimento, and to free his Church from the fatal nightmare of the temporal dominion that the kept oppressed and dejected.6
"So the fiat voluntas tua, sicut in coelo et in terra, that every priest or friar recites almanco fifteen times a day, is not less in them an oration with lips, than a manifested mensogna: dreaming and brigando impossible and certainly not longer lasting restoration of temporal domain; with promoting interventions, provoking wars and massacres, in open opposition to that same Gospel that with words and appearance they profess to profess; but that with facts all day they deny.
"God forgive and revive them!
"With the ridding of the storm by the church, and with the current political regime enforced in Europe, a large source of good is disclosed to the moralization of peoples. And to widen it more and more I would very much believe the creation of a Tribunal for merits and rewards, as it exists for crimes and penalties.
"That if the latter with the fear of the gastigo moves the man away from evil; that with the love of virtue calls him to good. "7
It could be objected that, in fact, it is easy to talk in this way. Maybe. We do not know, however, if such an accusation can be made to Don Benedetto Scafi. Which certainly did not send them to say how, for example, he tries this letter to Pope Pius IX, "also signed by others of the Clergy, and reported by the Giornale Il Popolo d'Italia at number 207 dated 28 July 1862", with which the Pope was invited to abandon the temporal power: "Most Holy Father. The Clergy of the Municipality of Santopadre, for the good of the Church, of Italy, of humanity, feels the duty to add its own to universal and common vows, and to implore your Holiness, Vicar of Jesus Christ, to abandon the World that temporal and worldly power, which (as it is written in the Gospel) the Divine Master with sayings demonstrated and with facts, disregarding the Head of a religion of peace, holy and pure; as when he protested that his reign was not the storm and I fell, when wanted for King, to flee to the mountain; when he ordered to return to Caesar, he is Caesar; and when he preached detachment from earthly goods. That if God (a punishment only of human pride) has for some time allowed and tolerated, it is now time that his mercy finally triumphs. May Your Holiness accept the voice of the people, which is the voice of God, and impart to the Clergy, who is its interpreter, the apostolic blessing. Santopadre 13 June 1862. Priest Benedetto Scafi-Priest Nicola Casciano-Priest Angelantonio Notargiacomo. "8
But Scafi had "contacts" also with Giuseppe Garibaldi, who writes Don Benedetto, "being pleased with my good will, he honored me with the following letter, also reported by the People of Italy in the number 188 of July 11, 1863": "To the Priest Benedetto Scafi - Santopadre. Caprera June 26, 1863. I received your money which I will send to the Polish police. In the meantime, have a word of thanks. If the ugly genie de 'priests resembled you, humanity would not be brutal, and we would be in Rome. Your Giuseppe Garibaldi. "9
Don Benedetto naturally rejoices when, on 20 September 1870, with the "breach of Porta Pia" the temporal power of the Church ends. "Oh! - I said then - could not live the worthy patriot of my country and friend, D. Giuseppe Margarita (died at 'January 16, 1848)! Which, because of the temporal domination of the Pontifical, could not fix faith, when in 1846 I told him as possible, and perhaps not so distant, the age of Italian Unity. It is true that he would have seen me persecuted by the police, by obliging me on 5 September 1849 to leave the day from Naples after a day of detention among political prisoners; and alluded to trustworthy; searched the house of my usual home in Santopadre on November 28, 1852, ruining all the papers and newspapers; and my Casina ai Vallimàmoli, on May 17, 1859. But he would have seen the events of 1859, 1860, 1866 and in preference among all those of September 20, 1870, who were making my correct presentiments. "10
It can not be forgotten that on the road of Don Benedetto there is, for almost a quarter of a century, from 1838 to 1862, a character not only with a strong personality - Crescenzo Marsella in I Vescovi Sora writes that "he would have arrested his father if he had seen him escape from prison and would have handcuffed his mother if he had surprised her in the infraction of a law" - but also closely linked with the Bourbon King Ferdinand II: the Bishop Giuseppe Montieri11. So if a certain day the "Abbate" of Santopadre is suspended a divinis or even ends up in jail, albeit for a short time, and is, however, persecuted as "reliable", evidently his political sympathies he must have already manifested in times not suspicious, well aware of the risks that ran.
The suspension a divinis is from 1844 and the official cause that provokes it has all the air of the classic drop in the already full vessel: when in that year the realization of the rotatable road from Santopadre to Arpino is undertaken on the project of architect Francesco Coccoli , given the lack of funds, Don Benedetto, he recounts, "to facilitate and save the expenses of a Chief Engineer and Surveyors at work in economics, I take on myself all the responsibility of management and supervision and from dawn in the morning at nightfall I am tirelessly at the place of labor, whether it was a clear or rainy day, wet or dry, freezing or extinguishing. "
"But a work so beautiful," continues Scafi, "could not be without opponents and one, indeed the only one, was the Second Elected, that Officer that then replaced the Mayor in case of impediment. He began to appeal against the Mayor himself who was working; but he ended up being left destitute by the Office of Elected.
"This dishonor, however, healed and believed that the only way to avert the work of the new road would be to remove me, get from Bishop Montieri my suspension from the Mass. But I who did not want to work so holy had abandoned themselves, as it would certainly have happened, I did not take any thought of suspension until I had opened, along the Santopadrese territory, the whole trail in the length of over three kilometers ... "
In 1848 Scafi would have reacted to the injustice he had suffered by writing a harsh satire against Montieri's politics and work. The satire, printed in Sora in 1866, had a certain diffusion, particularly among all those (and there were many) who had suffered the implacable rigor of Montieri.
In his News, Benedetto Scafi quotes Bishop Montieri only in a couple of occasions: a few lines, but with subtle wit, and almost a profile emerges. Thus, when he speaks of the costume of the peasant women of Santopadre, he states that "in 1840 Bishop Montieri added the handkerchief, or fisciù, which covers from the neck to the chest"; so, when he speaks of the earthquakes that ravaged the country, he writes that "another tremor is famous not for the effect - which is similar to the others - but for the coincidence of the coming in the Diocese of the new Bishop Monsignor Montieri, which took place the day November 1, 1838, at the same time that he placed the foot for the first time. The event was held of ill luck and really his bad system with which, wanting to remove the scandals, multiplied immensely, it increased the belief. "
In 1871, when he was sixty-five years old, Scafi wrote Santopadre's Historical News in which he was a punctual researcher and attentive observer, giving a complete picture of the country as it was in its time (institutions, economy, places of worship, environment, art , traditions) and also reporting many historical and archaeological information.
Don Benedetto Scafi died December 26, 1879. In the preface to the first reprint of his book by the municipal administration of Santopadre on the centenary of the author's death, the mayor of the time, Rocco Forte, highlights, among other things, "the a human and progressive charge, which shines through the whole work of "Scafi and it is said" convinced that if He could, for a moment, return among us, he would finally be satisfied with His desire for the progress and the civilization of all ".
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