lazzari

The lazzari were a different caste than the underclass of London or Paris.

Delizia! John Dickie 2008

And as the more perceptive Grand Tourists found out, the lazzari were a mysterious group.

Delizia! John Dickie 2008

If the lazzari were a mafia, then so, too, were all the other vested interests within the annona system—indeed so, too, was anyone within ancien régime society who had power that the king’s ministers coveted.

Delizia! John Dickie 2008

By December, the lazzari were acting out mock executions and carrying threatening placards.

Delizia! John Dickie 2008

But the lazzari also knew how to help themselves, and how to turn famine into good business.

Delizia! John Dickie 2008

When the Neapolitan Republic was overthrown a few months later, the revenge of the lazzari was just as astonishing.

Delizia! John Dickie 2008

Without political leadership from the lazzari, the poor of the city remained calm until plenty returned—even during the epidemic that killed so many hunger-weakened citizens in the spring and summer of 1764.

Delizia! John Dickie 2008

The lazzari are now just a memory and, we are assured, the famous maccheroni with tomato sauce are eaten with a fork rather than with the hands.

Delizia! John Dickie 2008

More than one historian has compared the lazzari in 1763–64 to the camorra—the Neapolitan mafia that would emerge in the nineteenth century.

Delizia! John Dickie 2008

Most distinctively, the lazzari were neither drunken nor given to riot or rebellion.

Delizia! John Dickie 2008