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Folklore Of Italy
Folklore of Italy refers to the folklore and urban legends of Italy. Within the Italian territory, various people have followed each other over time, each of which has left its mark on current culture. Some tales also come from Christianization, especially those concerning Devil, demons, which are sometimes recognized by Christian demonology. Italian folklore also includes the genre of the fairy tale (where the term itself was born), folk music, folk dance and folk heroes. Figures and Heroes of Italian folklore Below is a list of the folklore figures who have animated Italian folk tales since ancient Rome. Traditional characters * In Italian folklore, the Befana is an old woman who Christmas gift-bringer, delivers gifts to children throughout Italy on Epiphany (holiday), Epiphany Eve (the night of January 5) in a similar way to Santa Claus or the Biblical Magi, Three Magi Kings. A popular belief is that her name derives from the Calendar of saints, Feast of Epiphany (Christi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Calendar Of Saints
The calendar of saints is the traditional Christian method of organizing a liturgical year by associating each day with one or more saints and referring to the day as the feast day or feast of said saint. The word "feast" in this context does not mean "a large meal, typically a celebratory one", but instead "an annual religious celebration, a day dedicated to a particular saint". The system rose from the early Christian custom of commemorating each martyr annually on the date of their death, their birth into heaven, a date therefore referred to in Latin as the martyr's ''dies natalis'' ('day of birth'). In the Eastern Orthodox Church, a calendar of saints is called a ''Menologion''. "Menologion" may also mean a set of icons on which saints are depicted in the order of the dates of their feasts, often made in two panels. History As the number of recognized saints increased during Late Antiquity and the first half of the Middle Ages, eventually every day of the year had at l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Venetian Lagoon
The Venetian Lagoon (; ) is an enclosed bay of the Adriatic Sea, in northern Italy, in which the city of Venice is situated. Its name in the Italian and Venetian languages, ' (cognate of Latin ' ), has provided the English name for an enclosed, shallow embayment of salt water: a lagoon. Location The Venetian Lagoon stretches from the River Sile in the north to the Brenta in the south, with a surface area of around . It is around 8% land, including Venice itself and many smaller islands. About 11% is permanently covered by open water, or canals, as the network of dredged channels are called, while around 80% consists of mud flats, tidal shallows and salt marshes. The Lagoon is the largest wetland in the Mediterranean Basin. It is connected to the Adriatic Sea by three inlets: Lido, Malamocco and Chioggia. Situated at one end of a largely enclosed sea, the lagoon is subject to large variations in its water level. The most extreme are the spring tides known as the ' (Italia ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polesine
Polesine (; ; ) is a geographic and historic area in the north-east of Italy whose limits varied through centuries; it had also been known as Polesine of Rovigo for some time. Nowadays it corresponds with the province of Rovigo in the viewpoint of political geography. In the viewpoint of physical geography it is a strip of land about 100-km long and 18-km wide located between the lower courses of the Adige and the Po rivers, limited to the east by the Adriatic Sea and leaving the western limit undefined. Geography The eastern portion of Polesine corresponds to the delta of the Po, and it is constantly expanding eastward because of the detritus sediment phenomenon. The Po and the Adige are the first and the third biggest rivers of Italy as for rate of flow, yet another river flows across Polesine between these two main rivers: the Canal Bianco; this means that by far most of the fresh water of Italy flows into the sea through Polesine. Due to this large amount of water it ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Benandanti
The () were members of an agrarian visionary tradition in the Friuli district of Northeastern Italy during the 16th and 17th centuries. The claimed to travel out of their bodies while asleep to struggle against malevolent sorcerers (; ) in order to ensure good crops for the season to come. Between 1575 and 1675, in the midst of the Witch trials in the Early Modern period, Early Modern witch trials, a number of were accused of being heresy, heretics or witchcraft, witches under the Roman Inquisition. According to Early Modern records, were believed to have been born with a caul on their head, which gave them the ability to take part in nocturnal visionary traditions that occurred on specific Thursdays during the year. During these visions, it was believed that their spirits rode upon various animals into the sky and off to places in the countryside. Here they would take part in various games and other activities with other , and battle malevolent witches who threatened both thei ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sardinia
Sardinia ( ; ; ) is the Mediterranean islands#By area, second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after Sicily, and one of the Regions of Italy, twenty regions of Italy. It is located west of the Italian Peninsula, north of Tunisia and 16.45 km south of the French island of Corsica. It has over 1.5 million inhabitants as of 2025. It is one of the five Italian regions with some degree of Autonomous administrative division, domestic autonomy being granted by a Regions of Italy#Autonomous regions with special statute, special statute. Its official name, Autonomous Region of Sardinia, is bilingual in Italian language, Italian and Sardinian language, Sardinian: / . It is divided into four provinces of Italy, provinces and a Metropolitan cities of Italy, metropolitan city. Its capital (and largest city) is Cagliari. Sardinia's indigenous language and Algherese dialect, Algherese Catalan language, Catalan are referred to by both the regional and national law as two of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guido Da Landriano
Guido da Landriano, or Landriani (; before 1159 - after 1190), was an Italian condottiero and politician. He held the position of consul of the city of Milan and was the military leader of the troops of the Lombard League during the battle of Legnano (29 May 1176). Alberto da Giussano, who according to tradition, was in command of the Lombard League, is in fact a legendary figure. Biography He belonged to the noble Milanese family of the "Landriani" (or "da Landriano"). The first historical document that mentions Guido da Landriano is dated 15 July 1159 and refers to the incarceration he suffered during the second descent in Italy of Frederick Barbarossa, when he held the post of Consul of Milan. After the battle of Siziano, Guido da Landriano was imprisoned in Pavia, a city allied to the German emperor. A second mention of the Milanese consul is contained in a document dated 31 December 1167: in this act, the name of Guido da Landriano appears among those of the members of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frederick Barbarossa
Frederick Barbarossa (December 1122 – 10 June 1190), also known as Frederick I (; ), was the Holy Roman Emperor from 1155 until his death in 1190. He was elected King of Germany in Frankfurt on 4 March 1152 and crowned in Aachen on 9 March 1152. He was crowned King of Italy on 24 April 1155 in Pavia and emperor by Pope Adrian IV on 18 June 1155 in Rome. Two years later, the term ' ("holy") first appeared in a document in connection with his empire. He was later formally crowned King of Burgundy, at Arles on 30 June 1178. His nickname of ' (meaning "Red Beard" in Italian) "was first used by the Florentines only in 1298 to differentiate the emperor from his grandson, Frederick II ... and was never employed in medieval Germany" (the colour red was "also associated in the Middle Ages with malice and a hot temper"; in reality, Frederick's hair was "blond", although his beard was described by a contemporary as "reddish"). In German, he was known as ', which in English means " ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lombard League
The Lombard League (; ) was an alliance of cities formed in 1167, and supported by the popes, to counter the attempts by the Hohenstaufen Holy Roman emperors to establish direct royal administrative control over the cities of the Kingdom of Italy (which was part of the Holy Roman Empire) after many decades of de facto local self-governance. At its apex, it included most of the cities of Northern Italy, but its membership changed with time. With the death of the third and last Hohenstaufen emperor, Frederick II, in 1250, it became obsolete and was disbanded. Although having mainly a military purpose, the Lombard League also had its own stable government (, i.e. Regents of Lombardy), because of which it can be considered as one of the first examples of confederation in Europe. History The association succeeded the Veronese League, established in 1164 by Verona, Padua, Vicenza, and the Republic of Venice, after Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa had claimed direct Imperial co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Battle Of Legnano
The battle of Legnano was a battle between the imperial army of Frederick Barbarossa and the troops of the Lombard League on 29 May 1176, near the town of Legnano, in present-day Lombardy, Italy. Although the presence of the enemy nearby was already known to both sides, they suddenly met without having time to plan any strategy. The battle was crucial in the long war waged by the Holy Roman Empire in an attempt to assert its power over the municipalities of northern Italy, which decided to set aside their mutual rivalries and join in a military alliance symbolically led by Pope Alexander III, the Lombard League. The battle ended the fifth and last descent into Italy of Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, who after the defeat tried to resolve the Italian question by adopting a diplomatic approach. This resulted a few years later in the Peace of Constance (25 June 1183), with which the Emperor recognized the Lombard League and made administrative, political, and judicial concessions to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Character (arts)
In fiction, a character is a person or being in a narrative (such as a novel, play, radio or television series, music, film, or video game). The character may be entirely fictional or based on a real-life person, in which case the distinction of a "fictional" versus "real" character may be made. Derived from the Ancient Greek word , the English word dates from the Restoration, although it became widely used after its appearance in '' Tom Jones'' by Henry Fielding in 1749. From this, the sense of "a part played by an actor" developed.Harrison (1998, 51-2) quotation: (Before this development, the term '' dramatis personae'', naturalized in English from Latin and meaning "masks of the drama", encapsulated the notion of characters from the literal aspect of masks.) A character, particularly when enacted by an actor in the theater or cinema, involves "the illusion of being a human person". In literature, characters guide readers through their stories, helping them to understa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alberto Da Giussano
Alberto da Giussano (in Lombard ''Albert de Giussan'', in Latin ''Albertus de Gluxano'') is a legendary character of the 12th century who would have participated, as a protagonist, in the battle of Legnano on 29 May 1176. In reality, according to historians, the actual military leader of the Lombard League in the famous military battle with Frederick Barbarossa was Guido da Landriano. Historical analyses made over time have indeed shown that the figure of Alberto da Giussano never existed. In the past, historians, attempting to find a real confirmation, hypothesized the identification of his figure with ''Albertus de Carathe'' (Alberto da Carate) and ''Albertus Longus'' (Alberto Longo), both among the Milanese who signed the pact in Cremona in March 1167 which established the Lombard League, or in an Alberto da Giussano mentioned in an appeal of 1196 presented to Pope Celestine III on the administration of the church-hospital of San Sempliciano. These, however, are all weak ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
