Giosafatte

The «good brigand» of Panettieri: a student who takes to the woods to defend his sister's honour.

Giosafatte Talarico was born on 20 March 1807 in Panettieri, a small village in the province of Cosenza, to a peasant family. He studied at the seminary in Cosenza and then in Naples, but in 1823 he gave it all up: a local squire had seduced his sister and refused to marry her. Giosafatte killed him and fled into the forests of the Sila.

From then on tradition remembers him as the brigand who took from the powerful to give to the poor, a protector of women, the old and children, able to disguise himself to go to the theatre in Cosenza. In 1830, the story goes, he forced a parish priest to give a young peasant woman back the ducats of her dowry.

In 1845 he was pardoned by the king and confined to the island of Ischia with a pension. He lived there for forty years and died in 1886. The song opens the album: not a verdict on the man, but the story as his own people handed it down.

Salvatore Mazzei is not a historian: he gathers stories and tells them in music. These lines are a starting point for anyone who wants to look up the sources and form their own view.