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Lucrezia Borgia was the daughter of the Spanish Cardinal, Rodrigo Borgia, who later became Pope Alexander VI. Much scandal regarding incest and murder surrounds her. She entered into a passionate affair with Pietro Bembo, (1470-1547), a respected poet and scholar who became a Cardinal in the Vatican who became enraptured by her.


Born of an aristocratic Venetian family, Pietro Bembo wrote many adoring poems to Lucrezia, and they carried on a long correspondence that continued well after they parted. Theirs was an affair of great affection and respect.

Venice
October 18, 1503

Eight days have passed since I parted from f.f., and already it is as though I had been eight years away from her, although I can avow that not one hour has passed without her memory which has become such a close companion to my thoughts that now more than ever is it the food and sustenance of my soul; and if it should endure like this a few days more, as seems it must, I truly believe it will in every way have assumed the office of my soul, and I shall then live and thrive on the memory of her as do other men upon their souls, and I shall have no life but in this single thought. Let the God who so decrees do as he will, so long as in exchange I may have as much a part of her as shall suffice to prove the gospel of our affinity is founded on true prophecy. Often I find myself recalling, and with what ease, certain words spoken to me, some on the balcony with the moon as witness, others at that window I shall always look upon so gladly, with all the many endearing and gracious acts I have seen my gentle lady perform--for all are dancing about my heart with a tenderness so wondrous that they inflame me with a strong desire to beg her to test the quality of my love. For I shall never rest content until I am certain she knows what she is able to enact in me and how great and strong is the fire that her great worth has kindled in my breast. The flame of true love is a mighty force, and most of all when two equally matched wills in two exalted minds contend to see which loves the most, each striving to give yet more vital proof...It would be the greatest delight for me to see just two lines in f.f.'s hand, yet I dare not ask so much. May your Ladyship beseech her to perform whatever you feel is best for me. With my heart I kiss your Ladyship's hand, since I cannot with my lips.

Saint Nicholas (270 A.D. to 346 A.D.) was really Nicholas of Myra, a saint and bishop in Turkey. Many miracles have been attributed to him. He is also known as Nicholas the Wonderworker. He had a reputation for secret gift-giving, such as putting coins in the shoes of those who left them out for him. Because of this, he became the model for Santa Claus. After his death, his relics were brought to Bari. That is why is also known as Nicholas of Bari.

Saint Nicholas is the patron saint of sailors, merchants, archrs, and children. For his help to the poor, Nicholas is the patron saint of pawnbrokers; the three gold balls traditionally hung outside a pawnshop symbolize the three sacks of gold.

He was born into wealth, and using his inheritance, would give anonymous gifts. People began to suspect he was the gift giver. After he died, people in the region continued to give to the poor anonymously, and such gifts were still often attributed to Saint Nicholas. How many of us initiate a Secret Santa project in our work places and schools?

His original tomb can be found the Basilica of Saint Nicholas in Myra in Turkey, but the Italians acquired his relics in the 11th century. Some say his relics were taken by thiefs or pirates. Others believe they were taken in response to a vision by which Saint Nicholas himself appeared and commanded that his relics be moved in order to preserve them from an impending Muslim conquest.At the tomb of Saint Nicholas in Bari, some observers have reported seeing myrrh exude from his relics and when using this myrrh for annointing, resulted in numerous miracles. Vials of myrrh from his relics have been taken all over the world for centuries, and can still be obtained from his church in Bari. Currently at Bari, there are two churches at his shrine, one Roman Catholic and one Orthodox.

There is also a Venetian legend that most of the relics were actually taken to Venice (where a great church to St. Nicholas, the patron of sailors, was built on the Lido), and only an arm was left at Bari. This tradition was overturned in the 1950s when a scientific investigation of the relics in Bari revealed a largely intact skeleton.

In Myra, the relics of Saint Nicholas exuded a clear watery liquid which smells like rose water, called manna (or myrrh), which is believed by the faithful to possess miraculous powers. After the relics were brought to Bari, they continued to do so, much to the joy of the new owners. Even up to the present day, a flask of manna is extracted from the tomb of Saint Nicholas every year on December 6th (the Saint's feast day) by the clergy of the basilica. It is however worth noting that the actual relics are entombed several feet below the floor, at sea level in a harbor town, so the occurrence of watery liquid may be explained by several theories. However, this does not stop many believers from holding to the presence of the liquid being a miraculous manifestation..


One legend surrounding Saint Nicholas tells of how a terrible famine struck and a malicious butcher lured three little children into his house, where he slaughtered and butchered them, placing their remains in a barrel to cure, planning to sell them off as ham. Saint Nicholas, visiting the region to care for the hungry, not only saw through the butcher's horrific crime but also resurrected the three boys from the barrel by his prayers. Another version of this story, possibly formed around the eleventh century, claims that the butcher's victims were instead three clerks who wished to stay the night. The man murdered them, and was advised by his wife to dispose of them by turning them into meat pies. The Saint saw through this and brought the men back to life.

The most famous legend, however, describes a poor man who had three daughters, but could not afford a proper dowry for them. This meant that they would remain unmarried and probably, in absence of any other possible employment would have to become prostitutes. Hearing of the poor man's plight, Nicholas decided to help him but being too modest to help the man in public, (or to save the man the humiliation of accepting charity), he went to his house under the cover of night and threw three purses (one for each daughter) filled with gold coins through the window opening into the man's house. One version has him throwing one purse for three consecutive nights. Another has him throw the purses over a period of three years, each time the night before one of the daughters comes "of age". The third time the father lies in wait, trying to discover the identity of their benefactor. In one version the father confronts the saint, only to have Saint Nicholas say it is not him he should thank, but God alone. In another version, Nicholas learns of the poor man's plan and drops the third bag down the chimney instead; a variant holds that the daughter had washed her stockings that evening and hung them over the embers to dry, and that the bag of gold fell into the stocking.

The Roman Catholic Church has allowed for one scientific survey of the bones. In the late 1950s, during a restoration of the chapel, it permitted a team of hand-picked scientists to photograph and measure the contents of the crypt grave. In the summer of 2005, the report of these measurements was sent to a forensic laboratory in England. The review of the data revealed that the historical St. Nicholas was barely five feet in height (while not exactly small, still shorter than average, even for his time) and had a broken nose.

Among the Greeks and Italians he is a favourite of sailors, fishermen, ships and sailing. As such he has become over time the patron saint of several cities maintaining harbours.

Today, Saint Nicholas is still celebrated as a great gift-giver. Medieval nuns used the night of December 6 to anonymously deposit baskets of food and clothes at the doorsteps of the needy. Also in medieval times, on December 6 sailors and ex-sailors would flock to the harbour towns for church celebrations. On the way back they would stop at one of the various Nicholas fairs to buy some goods, gifts for their loved ones and invariably some little presents for their children. While the real gifts would only be presented at Christmas, the little presents for the children were given right away, courtesy of Saint Nicholas. This and his miracle of resurrecting the three butchered children, made Saint Nicholas a patron saint of children and students as well.

In Roman Catholic iconography, Saint Nicholas is depicted as a bishop, wearing the insignia of this dignity: a red bishop's cloak, a red miter and a bishop's crozier.

The episode with the three dowries is commemorated by showing him holding in his hand either three purses, three coins or three balls of gold.

Depending on whether he is depicted as patron saint of children or sailors, his images will be completed by a background showing ships, children or three figures climbing out of a wooden barrel (the three slaughtered children he resurrected).

Saint Nicholas (San Nicola) is the patron of the city of Bari, where he is buried. Its deeply felt celebration is called the Festa di San Nicola, held on the 7-8-9 of May. On May 8, his relics are carried on a boat on the sea in front of the city with many boats following (Festa a mare). On December 6 there is a ritual called the Rito delle nubili. The same tradition is currently observed in Sassari, where during the day of Saint Nicholas, patron of the city, gifts are given to young brides who need help before getting married.

In Trieste St. Nicholas (San Nicolò) is celebrated with gifts given to children on the morning of the 6th of December and with a fair called Fiera di San Nicolò during the first weeks of December. Depending on the cultural background, in some families this celebration is more important than Christmas. Trieste is a city on the sea, being one of the main ports of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and is influenced mainly by Italian, Slovenian and German cultures, but also Greek and Serbian.

Count Alessandro di Cagliostro (2 June 1743 – 26 August 1795) was the alias for the occultist Giuseppe Balsamo (also called Joseph Balsamo), an Italian adventurer. Alessandro Cagliostra was born to a poor family in Albergheria, which was once the old Jewish Quarter of Palermo, Sicily. Despite his family's precarious financial situation, his grandfather and uncles made sure he received a solid education, He was taught by a tutor and later became a novice in the Catholic Order of St. John of God, from which he was eventually expelled.

During his period as a novice in the order, he learned chemistry as well as a series of spiritual rites. In 1764, when he was seventeen, he convinced Vincenzo Marano, a wealthy goldsmith, of the existence of a hidden treasure buried several hundred years prior at Mount Pellegrino. Alessandro's knowledge of the occult, Marano reasoned, would be valuable in preventing them from being attacked by magical creatures guarding the treasure. In preparation for the expedition to Mount Pellegrino, however, Cagliostra requested seventy pieces of silver from Marano.

When the time came for the two to dig up the supposed treasure, Cagliostra attacked Marano, who was left bleeding and wondering what had happened to the boy—in his mind, the beating he had been subjected to had been the work of djinns. The next day, Marano paid a visit to Cagliostra's house in via Perciata (since then renamed via Conte di Cagliostro), where he learned the young man had left the city. Cagliostra, accompanied by two accomplices, had fled to the city of Messina. By 1765–66, Cagliostra found himself on the island of Malta, where he became an auxiliary for the Sovereign Military Order of Malta and a skilled pharmacist.

Cagliostro claimed to be the son of the Prince and Princess of the Anatolian Christian Kingdom of Trebizond, orphaned and reared by the Grand Master of the Knights of Malta and, for several years, in the household of the Sheriff of Medina, who raised him as a Christian.

In early 1768 Cagliostra left for Rome, where he worked as a secretary to Cardinal Orsini. The job proved boring and he soon started leading a double life, selling magical "Egyptian" amulets and engravings pasted on boards and painted over to look like paintings. Of the many Sicilian expatriates and ex-convicts he met during this period, one introduced him to a fourteen-year-old girl named Lorenza Seraphina Feliciani, whom he married.
The couple moved in with Lorenza's parents and her brother in the vicolo delle Cripte, adjacent to the strada dei Pellegrini. Cagliostra's coarse language and the way he incited her to display her body contrasted deeply with her parents' deep rooted religious beliefs. After a heated discussion, the young couple left.

At this point Cagliostra befriended Agliata, a forger and swindler, who taught him how to use his talent for drawing to his advantage. This meant he would teach him how to forge letters, diplomas and a myriad of other official documents. In return, though, he sought sexual intercourse with Balsamo's young wife, a request to which he acquiesced.

The couple traveled together to London, where he supposedly met the Comte de Saint-Germain. He traveled throughout Europe, especially to Courland, Russia, Poland, Germany, and later France. His fame grew to the point that he was even recommended as a physician to Benjamin Franklin during a stay in Paris.

He was prosecuted in the affair of the diamond necklace which involved Marie Antoinette and Prince Louis de Rohan, and was held in the Bastille for nine months but finally acquitted, when no evidence could be found connecting him to the affair. Nonetheless, he was asked to leave France, and departed for England. Here he was accused by Theveneau de Morande of being Giuseppe Balsamo, which he denied in his published Open Letter to the English People, forcing a retraction and apology from Morande.

Cagliostro left England to visit Rome, where he met two people who proved to be spies of the Inquisition. Some accounts hold that his wife was the one who initially betrayed him to the Inquisition. On 27 December 1789, he was arrested and imprisoned in the Castel Sant'Angelo. Soon afterwards he was sentenced to death on the charge of being a Freemason. The Pope changed his sentence, however, to life imprisonment in the Castel Sant'Angelo. After attempting to escape he was relocated to the Fortress of San Leo where he died not long after.

He was an extraordinary forger. Giacomo Casanova, in his autobiography, narrates an encounter with Cagliostro who was able to forge a letter of Casanova despite being unable to understand it.

Occult historian Lewis Spence comments in his entry on Cagliostro that the swindler put his finagled wealth to good use by starting and funding a chain of maternity hospitals and orphanages around the continent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alessandro_Cagliostro

Who doesn’t want to board an Italian luxury cruise ship and sail down the west coast of Italy? That’s what romance author, Mona Rossi, believes and so she organizes such a voyage for her fellow colleagues of the romance fiction industry.

Now, Mona isn’t your typical romance author. A woman of Italian heritage, she is in love with a handsome, stalwart, vampire named Fausto Silvius, who wants to make her his wife. But Mona isn’t certain she wants to enter into a life of vampirism, even if eternal life is one of the benefits. As the cruise departs, treachery plagues Fausto and Mona in the form of a husband and wife team of vampire hunters.

Murder and mayhem and, of course, blood drinking soon ensues. Trouble in the form of Fausto’s ex-wife adds conflict. And who is this terrible ex-wife? Why Lucrezia Borgia herself, who follows her vampire husband through the centuries and refuses to relinquish her claim of him!

In this light-hearted, often comical, paranormal romance, Diana Rubino spices up the pages with sprinklings of her southern Italian backgrounds. From the Catholic Church to rings of garlic, from nefarious members of the mafia to olio e aglio pasta, she truly brings a strong Italian flavour to this novel. Plenty of passionate love scenes add spice to the story.

A Bloody Good Cruise is an entertaining tale with a contemporary, unique plot and zany, colourful characters.

Some of my earliest memories are of this beautiful Alpini song. I remember after weddings or family get togethers, entire tables of people singing and harmonizing this song, while staff urgently cleared tables around us.

My uncle, Pietro Basso, comes from near the Bassano della Grappa region of Italy. My father, Dolfino Sichirollo, is also from the area around Venice, and so these songs were popular in their paese.

It is definitely a mountain song, traditional to the Alpine soldiers there. The words are so simple, yet so beautiful, their poignancy stirs emotions every time I listen to it.

It brings back some of the happiest memories of my childhood. It is such a poignant song and I was thrilled to find a version of it on You Tube for your enjoyment.

Now I will sit back and let this beautiful song transport me into the past.