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Bull fighting apparently started in
eighth-century Spain as a spectacle in which a man on
horseback would confront the animal. (At least
plausibly, the affair was a ritualized descendant of the
above-mentioned ancient practice of bull sacrifice.) It
survived in that form for some centuries and was very
popular among the noble classes in Spain until 1567,
when Pope Pius V issued a Papal bull (make up your own
joke!) against man-vs.-beast sports. The ban was revoked
by the next Pope and bull-fighting later developed into
the form we know—man on foot against the beast;
the first bull fight of that nature was in Spain in the
early 1720s. It is still very popular in that nation but
is forbidden in many other European countries. It never occurred to me that there
had ever been a bull fight in Naples. Yes, Naples was ruled by the Spanish from 1500
to 1700, so it is possible that there were versions of
the mounted knight-vs.-bull spectacle in Spanish Naples,
though I have not read that there were. In any event,
bull fighting certainly was not practiced under the Bourbon dynasty that came to
Naples in the 1730s. ...the first "tauromachia," or bull fight, that has taken place in Naples for two centuries came off on Sunday, July 13. It was to be repeated on the following Thursday and so on for every Sunday and Thursday for two months...The article is largely a long citation from the London Times, which further reported... ...It is calculated that 10,000 persons went down on Sunday to the temporary amphitheatre, which is situated at the end of the people's villa, close to the church of the Carmine... The article notes that
Neapolitans had to wait out a quarantine due to a
cholera outbreak in Spain, but that finally
"...twelve Andalusian bulls, together with a large
company of performers in the coming tragedy, soon
arrived, and were received with a joyous welcome."
The rest of the article is a long and anguished
tirade against bull fighting, the kindest phrase of
which is that it is "...a carnival of stupid
cruelty." The 1890 episode—from the
description in the paper—took place in
the historic Piazza Mercato,
a space large enough to accommodate such an event;
indeed, it was also the site where Buffalo Bill had presented
his Wild West show in January of that same year. The Neapolitan bull
fights continued for at least a few years but moved
to a different location. The insert in the graphic
(above) is a poster advertisement for such an event.
Note the Spanish Plaza
de Toros but, below that in Italian, Corrida di tori
(bull fight, though corrida is borrowed from Spanish)
and Caccia di
buffali (buffalo hunt!—that
has to be in imitation of the earlier Buffalo Bill show).
An article from Il
Mattino, the Neapolitan daily, of September
11, 1893, reports on the spectacle in the new
hippodrome near the upper station of the Montesanto
cable-car, an area that was then still largely
countryside. In an age before mass spectator sports
such as soccer, the new arena served for whatever
you might get people to show up and pay for: a
race-track for horses and bicycles—and,
of course, bull fights. The tone of the article has none
of the disapproval of the foreign press, cited above. It
is light-hearted in the extreme, concluding that the day
was one of "hilarity for all...except for the animals."
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