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About This Coin
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This 1879, five-lira silver coin belonged to my paternal grandmother, Rosina Giglio. She had it blessed by the village priest, and paid a local witch (magara) to provide words for a spell intended to assist in healing. She used it as a "charm" on her children, husband, grandchildren, parents, herself and others. My own mother, who inherited it from her mother-in-law, used it in the same way on her own children, but was never told the "words" purchased from the witch because according to witchcraft the revealing of the secret words renders the cure powers useless. Mom evidently had to make up her own. The number of people upon whom this coin was rubbed while uttering unknown healing words is staggering. Here is a partial list: Rosina Giglio (probably the entire Giglio clan) and her husband Pasquale D'Elia, their seven children which includes my dad, all the grandchildren which includes me, friends and neighbors, and maybe even family pets. I still have this coin, and as I feel a headache coming on, I think I'll go get it and rub it on my temples. Let's see what should I say? I know, "Stop hurting damn it."
Royalty Gone Amuck: Maybe He Needs My Coin
06-16-06
King Umberto I (Face on coin above) > King Victor Emmanuel III > King Umberto II > Prince Victor Emmanuel (Arrested)
ROME (AFP) - Prince Victor Emmanuel, son of
Italy's last king, was arrested on on suspicion of links to criminals involved
in corruption and prostitution. The Ansa news agency said the 69-year-old
prince, son of King Umberto II, was arrested on the order of a magistrate in
Potenza, southern Italy, on suspicion of "conspiracy to commit corruption,
forgery" and involvement in organising prostitution, the agency said. He
is being held in connection with inquiries into a traffic in slot machines and
the "recruitment" of prostitutes for a casino in Campione d'Italia, an Italian
enclave in the south of Switzerland, Ansa said.
"I am stunned," Emmanuel Filiberto, Victor Emmanuel's son, told Italian
television, talking of "yet another publicity stunt".
"I hope (the prosecutor) is sure of his charges, or it will be the last time he
does anything," said Filiberto, who is married to French actress Clotilde Courau.
"They took him, they removed his mobile phone and are in the process of taking
him to Potenza. They treated him like a bandit. You don't treat a man of 70 with
health problems like that."
Victor Emmanuel of Savoy made an official return to Italy in March 2003, after
56 years of exile imposed on the family of his grandfather King Victor Emmanuel
III, who ruled from 1900 to 1946 and died in 1947, for its support of the
fascist regime of Benito Mussolini. The constitutional ban on a return to
Italy by male heirs of the kingdom of Savoy was lifted in July 2002 by the
national parliament.
Victor Emmanuel, whose father Umberto II reigned briefly as Italy's last king in
1946, was detained near Lake Como in northern Italy, close to the Swiss border.
Twelve other people were detained or placed under house arrest, among them
Salvatore Sottile, the spokesman of former foreign minister Gianfranco Fini.
Also held were three casino managers from Messina in Sicily and the mayor of
Campione.
The prosecutor in Potenza, Henry John Woodcock, has made no comment but the
magistrate responsible for confirming the arrest warrants, Alberto Iannuzzi,
said the inquiry had been "delicate" and lasted more than two years. "The
2,000 or so pages of the arrest warrant that I signed after carefully evaluating
the facts given to me by the prosecutor speak for themselves," he said answering
Filiberto's "publicity stunt" charge. "We are surprised and appalled at
what has happened," said Alberto Claut, national secretary of the national
monarchy movement."
Victor Emmanuel has had brushes with the law in the past. He was arrested on the
French Mediterranean island of Corsica in 1978 after firing at a young German
with whom he had had an argument and who died some months later from his wounds.
In November 1991 he was acquitted on charges of manslaughter but given a six
month suspended sentence for owning and carrying weapons. He was suspected
of membership of the infamous P2 Masonic lodge blamed for far-right attacks in
the 1970s and was the subject of an inquiry into international arms trafficking
in the 1970s though never charged.
