Travels through Sicily and that part of Italy formerly called Magna Graecia
Creator
Date
1773
Identifier
de Beer Eb 1773 R
Publisher
London: Printed for Edward and Charles Dilly
Abstract
This travel memoir by Johann Hermann von Riedesel (born c. 1741), Baron of Eisenbach, Germany, consists of letters to his friend Johann Joachim Winckelmann. The Baron describes how, upon leaving Palermo on the 30th March 1767, he was accompanied by a guard to protect him from the banditti on the road. Were these banditti the predecessors of the Cosa Nostra or the Sicilian Mafia? John Dickie (2004) describes the Cosa Nostra as ‘an exclusive secret society’ governed by omertà or a code of silence and states that by 1890 ‘the mafia was already a murderous and sophisticated criminal association with powerful political connections and an international reach’.
Files
Citation
Johann Hermann von Riedesel, “Travels through Sicily and that part of Italy formerly called Magna Graecia,” ourheritage.ac.nz | OUR Heritage, accessed November 16, 2024, https://ourheritage.ac.nz/items/show/8617.