Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T01:55:36.690Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

‘Con il volere di Dio’: Bernardo Provenzano and religious symbolic ritual

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 January 2016

Rossella Merlino*
Affiliation:
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK
*

Abstract

This article adopts an interdisciplinary approach to analyse the symbolic religious language utilised by mafia boss Bernardo Provenzano in his social interactions with the lower echelons of the Sicilian mafia. When Provenzano assumed control of Cosa Nostra in the 1990s, he inherited an organisation severely diminished by a decade of internal conflicts, violence and the arrest of numerous leaders. The article argues that religious performative behaviour and language were used by the mafia boss to establish his leadership over Cosa Nostra, reshape its internal structure, and thereby revitalise an organisation in apparent terminal decline.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Association for the study of Modern Italy 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

References

Alexander, B.C. 1997. Ritual and current studies of ritual: Overview. In Anthropology of religion: A handbook, ed. Glazier, S.D., 139–60. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.Google Scholar
Arlacchi, P. 1983. La mafia imprenditrice. L'etica mafiosa e lo spirito del capitalismo. Bologna: Il Mulino.Google Scholar
Arlacchi, P. 1992. Gli uomini del disonore. La mafia siciliana nella vita del grande pentito Antonino Calderone. Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori Editore.Google Scholar
Arlacchi, P. 2000 [1994]. Addio Cosa Nostra: I segreti della mafia nella confessione di Tommaso Buscetta, Milan: R.C.S. Libri & Grandi Opere.Google Scholar
Bauman, R. 1977. Verbal art as performance. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.Google Scholar
Biagi, E. 1994. Un mafioso d'altri tempi. In Per conoscere la mafia. Testi documenti interpretazioni, eds. Criscione, A., Moschini, C., Salvarezza, M. and Scognamiglio, N., 142146. Turin: Marietti Scuola.Google Scholar
Blok, A. 1974. The Mafia of a Sicilian village, 1860–1960: A study of violent peasant entrepreneurs. London: William Clowes & Sons.Google Scholar
Bolzoni, A. 2008. Parole d'onore. BUR-Rizzoli.Google Scholar
Briggs, C. 1988. Competence in performance: The creativity of tradition in Mexican verbal art. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Cavadi, A. 2009. Il Dio dei mafiosi. Milan: San Paolo.Google Scholar
Ceruso, V. 2007. Le sagrestie di cosa nostra. Inchiesta su preti e mafiosi. Rome: Newton Compton Editori.Google Scholar
Dickie, J. 2004. Cosa nostra: A history of the Sicilian mafia. London: Hodder & Stoughton.Google Scholar
Dino, A. 2008. La Mafia Devota: Chiesa, Religione, Cosa Nostra. Rome–Bari: Editori Laterza.Google Scholar
Falcone, G., with Padovani, M. 1991. Cose di Cosa Nostra. Milano: Rizzoli.Google Scholar
Farrell, J., ed. 1997. Understanding the mafia. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Fasullo, N. 1993. Perché la Chiesa ha taciuto. Micromega 5:160–68.Google Scholar
Follain, J. 2008. The last godfathers: The rise and fall of the mafia's most powerful family. London: Hodder & Stoughton.Google Scholar
Gambetta, D. 1996 [1993]. The Sicilian mafia: The business of private protection. Boston, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Giordano, C. 1999. Il sentire religioso e il sentire mafioso nel transpersonale corleonese. In Come cambia la mafia. Esperienze giudiziarie e psicoterapeutiche in un paese che cambia, eds. Lo Verso, G., Lo Coco, G., Mistretta, S. and Zizzo, G., 133147. Milan: Franco Angeli.Google Scholar
Goffman, E. 1967. Interaction ritual: Essays on face-to-face behaviour. London: Allen Lane/Penguin Press.Google Scholar
Grasso, P. and La Licata, F. 2008. Pizzini, veleni e cicoria: La mafia prima e dopo Provenzano. Milan: Feltrinelli.Google Scholar
Hess, H. 1998 [1970]. Mafia and mafiosi: Origin, power and myth. London: Hurst & Co.Google Scholar
Lincoln, B. 1991. Emerging from the chrysalis: Rituals of women's initiation. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lodato, S. 1999. Venti Anni di Mafia. C'era una volta la lotta alla mafia. Milan: RCS Libri S.p.A. Google Scholar
Longrigg, C. 2008. Boss of bosses: How one man saved the Sicilian mafia. London: John Murray.Google Scholar
Lucarelli, C. 2004. La mattanza. Dai silenzi sulla mafia al silenzio della mafia. Turin: Einaudi.Google Scholar
Lupo, S. 2004 [1993]. Storia della mafia dalle origini ai nostri giorni. Rome: Donzelli.Google Scholar
Mignosi, E. 1993. Il signore sia coi boss. Palermo: Edizioni Arbor.Google Scholar
Naro, C. 1994. Il silenzio della Chiesa siciliana sulla mafia. In Martiri per la giustizia, ed. Barone, S., Caltanissetta-Roma.Google Scholar
Oliva, E. and Palazzolo, S. 2001. L'altra mafia. Biografia di Bernardo Provenzano. Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino Editore.Google Scholar
Oliva, E. and Palazzolo, S. 2006. Bernardo Provenzano. Il ragioniere di Cosa Nostra. Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino Editore.Google Scholar
Palazzolo, S., and Prestipino, M. 2008. Il codice Provenzano, ext. ed. Bari: Editori Laterza.Google Scholar
Paoli, L. 2003. Mafia brotherhoods: Organized crime, Italian style. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Principato, T. and Dino, A. 1997. Mafia donna. Le vestali del sacro e dell'onore. Palermo: Flaccovio.Google Scholar
Sales, I. 2010. I preti e i mafiosi. Storia dei rapporti tra mafie e chiesa cattolica. Milan: Baldini Castoldi Dalai Editore.Google Scholar
Santino, U. 2006. Subcultura. Narcomafie, no. 21.Google Scholar
Santoro, M. 2007. La voce del padrino. Mafia, cultura, politica. Verona: Ombre Corte.Google Scholar
Schechner, W. 1977. Essays on performance theory. 1970–1976. New York: Drama Book Specialist.Google Scholar
Schneider, J. and Schneider, P.T. 1976. Culture and political economy in western Sicily. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Stabile, F.M. 1992. Coscienza ecclesiale e fenomeno mafioso. In Mafia, politica, affari: rapporto 1992, 289301. Palermo: La Zisa.Google Scholar
Stabile, F.M. 1996. Cattolicesimo siciliano e mafia. Synaxis 14:1355.Google Scholar
Turner, V. 1969. The ritual process: Structure and anti-structure. Chicago: Aldine.Google Scholar
Turner, V. 1967. The forest of symbols: Aspects of Ndembu ritual. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Turner, V. 1972 [1957]. Schism and continuity in an African society: A study of Ndembu village life. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Turner, V. 1974. Dramas, fields and metaphors: Symbolic action in human society. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Turner, V. 1982a. From ritual to theatre: The human seriousness of play. New York: PAJ Publications.Google Scholar
Turner, V., and Turner, E. 1982b. Religious celebrations. In Celebration: Studies in festivity and ritual, ed. Turner, V., 201–19. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.Google Scholar
Van Gennep, A. 1960 [1909]. The rites of passage. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar

Archival sources

Commissione Parlamentare Antimafia, Relazione conclusiva (Carraro), Relazione di minoranza (La Torre e altri), VI legislatura, Doc. XXIII, n. 2, Tipografia del Senato, Roma 1976.Google Scholar
Commissione Parlamentare d'Inchiesta sul Fenomeno della Criminalità Organizzata Mafiosa o Similare (istituita con legge 19 ottobre 2001, n. 386), Doc. XXIII, n. 3.Google Scholar
Tribunale di Termini Imerese, Procedimento Penale no. 124/97 R.G. contro Biondolillo Giuseppe + altri, udienza del 16 Ottobre 2002, (c/o Aula Bunker Carcere Due Palazzi – Padova), 110–39.Google Scholar
Tribunale di Palermo, Ufficio istruzione processi penali, giudice istruttore Giovanni Falcone, Processo verbale di interrogatorio dell'imputato Buscetta Tommaso, Palermo 1984.Google Scholar