Things to remind Italians who are desperate. In an era when a virus, the Coronavirus, is enough to depress an entire people, in order to find motivation it is enough to resort to the most effective tool we have: memory.
And we discover that there are many things Italians should remember. Because Italy is not a peripheral offshoot of Europe but one of the driving forces of the world. That’s too much? Let’s read here:
Things to remind Italians who are desperate about Coronavirus
– Italians have ruled half the world. At the time of its greatest expansion, the Roman Empire ruled from Spain to the Middle East, from Scotland to Egypt. All Europe and the Mediterranean had their heads in Rome. Not in Brussels.
– For almost twenty centuries Italians have commanded the most widespread religion in the world, Catholicism. The popes who ruled morally over the world were Italians and chosen by Italians. Monasticism, which will reclaim Europe, was born in Italy, with San Benedetto da Norcia and most religious movements have Italy as their epicenter.
– Today if we want to talk about high level schools we mention Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard. But universities, incubators of culture and knowledge, were born in Italy. The oldest university institution in the world, that of Bologna, dates back to 1088.
– Today all the world’s economies look to China as a destination for development. The first Westerners who set foot in China are Italians. It is enough to read the Million by Marco Polo to find out how the Italians were already there in the 13th century.
Colombo, Vespucci, Galilei…
– Does anyone remember by chance that the United States of America rests on the earth discovered by an Italian, the Genoese Cristoforo Colombo, and that takes its name from another Italian, Florentine, Amerigo Vespucci?
– Everyone looks to science today as a central element in the progress of humanity. It is therefore perhaps worth remembering that the whole scientific construct, from medicine to physics, from mathematics to computer science, is based on a method that we invented in Italy. That of the Pisan Galileo Galilei.
– Every time we turn on the radio, anywhere in the globe, we should remember that a Bolognese, Guglielmo Marconi invented it, every time we use a battery we should remember Alessandro Volta. And every time we use a phone and therefore every time we use internet, we shouldn’t forget that Antonio Meucci invented it.
A little pride. How many other things to remind Italians are there?