ABSTRACT
In the nineteenth century, the Papal States occupied the best part of central Italy and divided the industrialized North from the rural South, or Meridione. Their presence had considerably delayed the country's process of modernization, which is why patriotism was tinged with anticlericalism. Ever since the unification, in 1870, the papacy considered itself a prisoner of the Italian State. Eventually, in 1929, about halfway through his Fascist ventennio, Mussolini brokered a truce with the church government, trading papal acceptance for the Italian State against the status of state religion for Catholicism. As they might expect, Grandpa did not feel the same way. He was born in the heart of the Apennines, the stalwart mountain chain that forms the Italian peninsula's backbone in Fosca, a town of subsistence farmers and shepherds. The timbered mountain slope came down to a narrow valley where the river flew, icy and transparent.
