Lester K. Little. Indispensable Immigrants

Alberto, the leading protagonist of this book, was a wine porter in the city of Cremona, where he lived until his death in 1279. He was probably from Villa d’Ogna, a village up in Bergamo’s mountainous hinterland, located about eighty kilometers from Milan in the region of Lombardy. As a poor peasant leaving home and the fields where he had worked since boyhood, he migrated to Cremona following the example of many peers at that time. There he became a brentadore (wine porter), carrying liquids in a brenta (a wooden vessel with shoulder straps like a backpack) and doing a job for a living, but also providing making an occupation that was necessary for many preindustrial cities. Alberto’s life story could be considered a common one in thirteenth-century Italy. However, soon after his death, the humble worker from a remote village in Lombardy became a saint: the saint of wine porters, object of veneration and honors by many fellows in several cities for many centuries. How was that possible? And, more importantly, how did other migrants like Alberto who came to cities from mountains and valleys establish their solidarity and defend their rights? For Lester K. Little, the author of Indispensable Immigrants, these questions are connected to each other, and sainthood is their answer. Little aims to provide that answer in about two hundred pages using memories, novels, and pictures collected from various archives and libraries in cities across Northern Italy, from Bergamo to Venice, from Ferrara to Modena, and so on.

Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Art history · Consumption (sociology) · Ethnology · Geography · Immigration · Patron saint · Peasant · Picnic · Political science · Politics · SAINT · Solidarity · Veneration · Visual arts · Wine · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Medieval History and Crusades