Dear readers, I am here today to talk about blasphemy.
I must ignore my reviewer, who recommends that I shorten the introductions of my texts. The structure of my articles is usually childish: intro, quote one or two leading authors on the subject, question them, and proceed to an inaccurate and also incomplete opinion due to lack of space. But I hope you, readers, can appreciate the following text, which is as rich in vocabulary as it is in offences against god.
On this ceremonious occasion, let us turn our thoughts to the motherland of Dante Alighieri; we cannot talk about blasphemy without mentioning Italian language.
Italy has welcomed me many times, some for study and others for leisure, and through my long stays there, I have come to understand Italian culture deeply. The country is way more than the promiscuity of Silvio Berlusconi, or the ridiculously crowded Carnival of Venezia, or the Mediterranean cuisine where breaking spaghetti is punishable by crucifixion.
Yet, something else has become less punishable in recent times: To release the stress accumulated by daily routine, new Italian legislation has allowed citizens to „shit on the sacred“. Some time ago, Mussolini did not allow insults against the Roman Catholic Church, and blasphemy was punished as a criminal offence. It was not until 1999 that new legislative decrees abolished blasphemy as a crime. It then became only punishable by an administrative fine, in other words, you have to pay something between €50 and €300. I do not know if anyone has entered Saint Peter’s square to yell blasphemes in order to test this.
One person who did enter there to spit at the feet of Saint Peter is an author whom I remember fondly, Cesar Vallejo. And he did even more with his masterful book entitled La puta de Babilonia (The Whore of Babylon). I consider this book to be the most comprehensive and well-founded diatribe against the catholic institution ever written. Vallejo carries out an excessive scrutiny, carefully analysing the history full of crimes and atrocities committed by the church. This masterpiece came to me during my rebellious adolescence, and it was an essential pillar that helped me humanise the concept of the church. Truth be told, I still have a lot of contempt for religion, but with the clarity of age, I have come to understand its ridiculousness based on people’s needs. We are the ridiculous ones as a species.
And now I am coming to the point I want to address. During my first stay in Italy for study purposes (I was taking a language and culture course for foreigners at the Università per stranieri di Siena), I also delved into street language, which is always more fun and enriching than what you can learn in school. And thus I came to understand Italian profanity. That was how I met Germano Mosconi, an icon of modern blasphemy. Mosconi, a renowned Venetian sports journalist, was exposed as a great blasphemer when a large number of videos were published without his consent, showing him uttering endless amusing profanities off camera. Mosconi, now an Italian meme, brought profanity to new generations and, in a way, further entrenched it into the language.
In Spanish (and many other languages), part of the insult and the desire to hurt with words lies in reminding the interlocutor (falsely most of the time) of their mother’s promiscuity. In Portuguese, this is considered too offensive, while in American English, joking about one’s mother is a common activity.
But in Italian, the official language of the Vatican, the seat of catholicism, the relaxing offence is focused on god, the catholic one. (The catholic god, being the same abrahamic god, is the same as the jewish one and the muslim one, and this is an irrefutable theological axiom, but if we were to translate that simple word into arabic, everyone, including Cesar Vallejo, would be in serious danger). We will not do such a thing yet.
So, a friend of mine born in the beautiful regions of Veneto came to enlighten me greatly on these sacred matters. It is precisely in the regions of northern Italy where blasphemy is most prevalent and accepted in everyday social interactions. It is clear why Italy, the heart of the papacy and the church, developed vocal affronts to the god who used to control absolutely everything since medieval times. That is festivities, laws, the calendar, and the ecclesiastical courts that burned anyone who did not share the catholic creed at the stake. It was they who managed to make citizens renounce and curse god to such an extent that it is now part of the language. But it is still reprehensible by a majority of society. Attributing pig-like qualities to the catholic god is fun for some and insulting for others. Cursing the virginity of the virgin mary is a relief when you are stuck in the traffic, but you should avoid doing so in public because you could be reprimanded for it.
Blasphemy in other languages such as Spanish or English does not occur that much, or at least I have not seen it become as verbally rich as it is in Italy. Of course, society is also divided. In Spain, you can curse god sitting at the table during lunchtime and your family will respond Amen, but in some other families it may not be a good idea.
In modern Italy, some young influencers have become famous for recording their grandparents blaspheming without any shame. Fascinating.
