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Masaniello's Revolt This terracotta sculpture of Masaniello is by R. Vaccarella. It is from the late 1800s and is on display at the church of the Carmine.
Tommaso Anielo (nicknamed "Masaniello") (1620-1647) was an illiterate fishmonger living and working in the area of Piazza Mercato (Market Square). That part of the city was, at the time, much more central to the everyday affairs of Naples than it is today. The rebuilding of Naples in the late 1800s and early 1900s separated the old Market Square from the new "downtown" and removed it from the vital position it had held for centuries. It was not simply a market place. It was the site of the popular Church of the Carmine; it was a place for folk festivals; it was the scene of historic events such as the execution of the Swabian pretender, Conradin; it had a gallows and various instruments of torture set up in the square and all used in the 1600s; the king's soldiers thronged the square; it was filthy, loud, crowded, colorful, busy and, very important, here was where you went to pay your taxes. The revolt apparently had a background of legitimate
popular discontent at ever-increasing taxes imposed by
the Spanish crown through their viceroy in Naples. The
actual outburst, itself, came at a popular festival held
in early July for the Feast of the Madonna of the
Carmine. This yearly festival entailed a mock battle
between the people and Turkish invaders. (This was at a
time, of course, when the memory of such invasions was
still fresh. The many Saracen
towers set up around the city and, indeed, the
entire coastline of the Kingdom of Naples were a
constant reminder of the recent past. At the time of the
revolt, there were no doubt still those in Naples who
remembered the epic sea battle of Lepanto in 1571 when
the Turks had finally been defeated.)
In any event, on Sunday morning, July 7, 1647, Masaniello's ragtag army, with him and his cousin at the head, spilled out of the festival—out of the world of make-believe—and into the tax-collection stalls of the market place and the battle was on. Their cry is said to have been, "Long live the King! Down with bad government!" They wrecked the tax stalls, kept moving, and destroyed the nearby home of an infamous tax collector by the name of Girolamo Letizia. With a mob/army of, by now, tens of thousands on the loose and roaming the streets, the Spanish viceroy was forced into concessions that, on paper, seem modest enough: the repeal of unjust taxes and the reinstitution of some of the early reforms set up in the previous century by the great founder of the Spanish Empire, Charles V. There was no realistic expectation or demand in 1647 for the abolition of the monarchy, a constitution, or even, what some say Masaniello (probably Genoino, above) really wanted: a reordering of society by which the people and the noble classes would be declared "equal"—whatever that might have meant. Masaniello got his few concessions, but they were apparently a rearguard action while the viceroy regrouped his forces. In other words, the viceroy caved in quickly, wined and dined Masaniello and his wife, and then set about getting rid of Masaniello. Simple murder makes martyrs, so that was out of the question. Somehow he had to make Masaniello irrelevant, disengage him from his cause and his followers. A few days into the revolt, Masaniello started exhibiting strange behavior. He went mad, they say. There are two possibilities: one is that he was totally drunk with the trappings of power conceded to him by the viceroy—by the parades, the banquets, the white horses, by having himself appointed Captain of the People, by hearing his wife referred to as "the Queen of the People", etc. etc. Two—by most accounts, a likely possibility—is that he was poisoned with roserpina, a powerful hallucinogenic, dumped into his wine at one of the many banquets he attended at the palace. On July 16, after giving a rambling, incoherent declaration to the people, he stormed into the Church of the Carmine and disrobed. At that point, obviously helpless and useless, he was dragged into a room in the adjacent monastery and murdered, probably by hired assassins. They severed his head and took it to the viceroy. The rest of Masaniello was collected by his loyal followers, who managed to get the head back and give the entire body a decent burial in the Church of the Carmine. More than a century later, these remains were disinterred and disposed of (probably strewn into the sea) on the order of Ferdinand IV of Naples, who was taking no chances that the burial site might serve as some sort of a pilgrimage point for yet more revolutionaries. The revolt lasted nine days, start to finish. At its
headiest, it sufficed to make the viceroy desert the
palace and hole up in the Castel
dell'Ovo for a while. At Masaniello's death, the
revolt was spent, and it is difficult to judge whatever
potential it might have had in the hands of a solid
block of organized revolutionaries. It did set the stage
for a very short-lived
First Neapolitan Republic as part of the struggle
for Naples between Spain and France.
Whatever support he had, evaporated almost immediately. From a historical distance—one from which we can view the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution—it is easy to read too much into the Neapolitan revolution of 1647 and, thus, it is difficult to judge Masaniello. Modern romantic claims that Masaniello's ideals forked over like lightning to inspire the downtrodden elsewhere in Europe are difficult to substantiate. Interestingly, a great revolution was taking place elsewhere in Europe at exactly the same time—the civil war in England, which resulted in a king being beheaded and a "protector," Oliver Cromwell, taking his place. The circumstances in Naples were totally different. (For one thing, religious strife was not a factor in Naples; everyone was, and still is, Roman Catholic.) There is no evidence that the rebellion, itself,
produced any lasting effects on the social conditions of
Naples or on the generally miserable lives that the
masses led. The episode, perhaps, served to remind the
rulers that the masses could get out of hand. It is not
clear that the rulers stored that bit of knowledge in
any but the most peripheral parts of their
consciousness. It would be 150 years before Naples was
swept by other waves of revolutionary fervor, this time
more solid ones coming in the wake of the French Revolution and Napoleon
Bonaparte.
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Straight folklore simply says
that when the news broke in Piazza Mercato (painting,
left) that the Spanish had levied yet another tax on
fruit, Masaniello—in charge of the mock army fighting
the mock Turks in the festival—was outraged and through
the power of his Robin Hood-type charisma transformed
his make-believe army into a real one and marched on the
palace to wring justice from the evil overlord, the
Spanish viceroy. There is some evidence that Masaniello,
however, had been contacted by one 
Masaniello was no doubt a
natural rallier of men. They say that he and his rebels
refused bribes from the Spanish to calm down, and that
they even turned down an offer of help from the French,
who would have been happy to see the Spanish lose
Naples, land that had once been French. Be all that as
it may, no constitution was granted or even demanded.
Masaniello wanted a redress of grievances, which he got,
and which did not last long after his demise. States are
not toppled by charisma alone. They may be
toppled by charismatic leaders with a power base,
something that Masaniello lacked.