Corfiot Italians are a population from the Greek island of Corfu (Kerkyra) with ethnic and linguistic ties to the Republic of Venice. Their name was specifically established by Niccolò Tommaseo during the Italian Risorgimento. During the first half of the 20th century, Mussolini (whose fascist regime promoted the ideals of Italian irredentism) successfully used the Corfiot Italians as a pretext to occupy Corfu twice.
Origins
The origins of the Corfiot Italian community can be found in the expansion of the Italian States toward the Balkans during and after the Crusades. In the 12th century, the Kingdom of Naples sent some Italian families to Corfu to rule the island. From the Fourth Crusade of 1204 onwards, the Republic of Venice sent many Italian families to Corfu. These families brought the Italian language of the Middle Ages to the island.Tagliavini, Carlo. Le origini delle lingue neolatine, p. 149.
When Venice ruled Corfu and the Ionian Islands, which lasted during the Renaissance and until the late 18th century, most of the Corfiote upper classes spoke Italian (or specifically Venetian in many cases), but the mass of people remained Greek ethnically, linguistically, and religiously before and after the Ottoman sieges of the 16th century.
Corfiot Italians were mainly concentrated in the city of Corfu, which was called "Città di Corfu" by the Venetians. More than half of the population of Corfu city in the 18th century spoke the Venetian language.Gray, Ezio. Le terre nostre ritornano...Malta, Corsica, Nizza, p. 92. The blend of Italian and Greek, originally known as the Dialetto Corcirese and comprising archaic Venetian with Greek syntax ultimately led to the Corfiot dialect of Greek known locally as Corfiatica.
The re-emergence of Greek nationalism, after the Napoleonic era, contributed to the gradual disappearance of the Corfiot Italians. Corfu was ultimately incorporated into the Kingdom of Greece in 1864. The Greek government abolished all Italian schools in the Ionian islands in 1870, and as a consequence, by the 1940s there were only fourteen hundred Corfiote Italians left.Vignoli Giulio. Gli Italiani Dimenticati. Minoranze Italiane In Europa, p. 132.
Venetian heritage
The Republic of Venice dominated Corfu for nearly five centuries until 1797. Although assailed several times by Ottoman naval and land forces and subjected to four notable sieges in 1537, 1571, 1573 and 1716, in which the great natural strength of the city and its defenders asserted itself time after time. The effectiveness of the powerful Venetian fortifications of the island was a great factor that enabled Corfu to remain the last bastion of free, uninterrupted Greek and Christian civilization in the southern Balkans after the fall of Constantinople. Will Durant, an American historian, claims that Corfu owed to the Republic of Venice the fact that it was the only part of Greece never conquered by the Muslim Turks.Will Durant. The Renaissance, p. 684. The Ottomans occupied briefly some of the other Ionian islands, but were unsuccessful with their four sieges of Corfu. This fact gave Corfu and Malta the title of "Bastions of Christian Europe" during the late Renaissance.
Language During these centuries, many Venetians moved to the island. Because of its association with the ruling elite, by the end of the 15th century, the influence of the Italian language and culture (including in some ways the Roman Catholic church) assumed a predominant role in the island. Until the second half of the 20th century the Veneto da mar was spoken in Corfu, and the local Greek language assimilated a large number of Italian and Venetian words, many of which are still common today. Indeed, even before the fall of the Byzantine Empire much of the population in Corfu spoke the Veneto da mar or the Mediterranean Lingua Franca Sabir as a second, or first, language.Gray, Ezio. Le terre nostre ritornano... Malta, Corsica, Nizza, p. 105
Corfu passed as a dowry from the Greek Despot of Epirus to Manfred of Sicily in 1259, and was not ruled by Greeks again until the 19th century. It became Venetian in 1386 although, with the exception of Corfu city which maintained a majority of a Venetian-speaking population (due partially to the Italkian of the capital's Jewish community), most of the peasants retained Greek as their first language.
According to historian Ezio Gray, the small communities of Venetian-speaking people in Corfu were mostly assimilated after the island became part of Greece in 1864 and especially after all Italian schools were closed in 1870.Gray, Ezio. Le terre nostre ritornano... Malta, Corsica, Nizza, p. 118. However, the Italian language maintained some importance, as can be seen by the fact that poets like Stefano Martzokis (Marzocchi was the surname of the father, an Italian from Emilia-Romagna) and Gerasimos Markoras, the first from Corfù and the second from Cefalonia, wrote some of their poems in Italian during the second half of the 19th century.
Culture and learning Venetian rule significantly influenced many aspects of the island's culture. The Venetian feudal families pursued a mild but somewhat assimilating policy towards the natives, who began to adopt many aspects of Venetian customs and culture. The Corfiotes were encouraged to enrich themselves by the cultivation of the olive, but were debarred from entering into commercial competition with Venice. The island served even as a refuge for Greek scholars, and in 1732 became the home of the first Academy of modern Greece. The first newspaper of Corfu was in Italian: the official weekly newspaper (Gazzetta degli Stati Uniti delle Isole Jone) was first published in 1814. First in Italian, then in both Greek and Italian, finally from 1850 in Greek and English; and it continued for the entire duration of the English Protectorate until 1864. Many Italian Jews took refuge in Corfu during the Venetian period and spoke their own language, a mixture of Hebrew and Venetian with some Greek words.
Venetian influence was also important in the development of the opera in Corfu. During Venetian rule, the Corfiotes developed a fervent appreciation of Italian opera, and many local composers, such as the Corfiot Italians Antonio Liberali and Domenico Padovani developed their career with the theatre of Corfu, called Teatro di San Giacomo.
Corfu's cuisine also maintains some Venetian delicacies, cooked with local spicy recipes. Dishes include "Pastitsada" (the most popular dish in the island of Corfu, that comes from the Venetian dish Spezzatino), "Strapatsada", "Sofrito", "Savoro", "Bianco" and "Mandolato". Some traditions in Corfu were introduced by the Venetians such as the Carnival (Ta Karnavalia).
Architecture
The architecture of Corfu City still reflects its long Venetian heritage, with its multi-storied buildings, its spacious squares such as the popular "Spianada" and the narrow cobblestone alleys known as "Kantounia". The town began to grow during the Venetian period on a low hillock situated between the two forts. In many respects, Corfu typifies the small Venetian town, or borgo, of which there are numerous other surviving examples in the former Venetian territories of the Adriatic Sea, such as Ragusa and Spalato in Dalmatia. As in Venice itself, the "campi" developed haphazardly in the urban fabric where it was natural for residents to congregate, especially around churches, civic buildings, fountains, and cisterns. The best example of such a space is Plateia Dimarcheiou ("Town Hall Square"), overlooked on its north side by the 17th century Loggia dei Nobili (which today serves as the seat of the local government) and on the east side by the late sixteenth century Catholic Church of St. Iakovos, or St. James. The Italian Renaissance is best represented on Corfu by the surviving structures of the Fortezza Vecchia (the Old Fortress) on the eastern side of the town, built by the Veronese military engineer Michele Sanmicheli and the Venetian Ferrante Vitelli, who also designed the later fortress on the west, the Fortezza Nuova.
Venetians promoted the Catholic Church during their four centuries of rule in Corfu. Today, the majority of Corfiots are Greek Orthodox Christians (following the official religion of Greece). However, there is still a percentage of Catholics (5% or 4,000 people) who owe their faith to their Venetian origins. These contemporary Catholics are mostly families who came from Malta (about two thirds), but also from Italy during Venetian rule. The Catholic community almost exclusively resides in the Venetian "Citadel" of Corfu City, living harmoniously alongside the Orthodox community.
Teatro di San Giacomo
During Venetian rule, the Corfiotes developed a fervent appreciation of Italian opera, which was the real source of the extraordinary (given conditions in the mainland of Greece) musical development of the island during that era. The opera house of Corfu during 18th and 19th centuries was that of the Nobile Teatro di San Giacomo, named after the neighbouring Catholic cathedral, but the theatre was later converted into the Town Hall. A long series of local composers, such as Antonio Liberali (a son of an Italian bandmaster of the British Army, who later translated his surname to 'Eleftheriadis'), Domenico Padovani (whose family has been in Corfu since the 16th century) or Spyridon Xyndas contributed to the fame of the Teatro di San Giacomo.