Giulio Andreotti, the longest

Last Roman senator. Last gray eminence. Last Machiavellian prince. The last of the Caesars. Imperial and papal Rome of the twentieth century lives and dies in one name: Giulio Andreotti. The symbol of an ancient power, almost “divine” in legitimacy … the Holy Roman Empire. Andreotti represents a centuries-old history that in the silence of his legend has continued and will continue to live in the Roman streets. The character is controversial, indeed very strange. Compelling. Impenetrable. Shrewd. A cinematic masterpice. The invisible protagonist of the Da Vinci Code. Keeper of secrets like Jacques Saunièr Saint-Clair, Grand Master of the Prieure de Sion. He captures, fascinates and intrigues our fantasies. Brilliant, too brilliant, undeterredly unique, but folkloric in its eternal existential charm. Stinging and fencer. With an unusual physiognomy: legendary hump, soft step, elegant, silent gait. Sense of humor and proverbial aphorisms: “There is someone who tried to bury me before. Someone in the meantime is also dead and I pray for him; The wickedness of the good is very dangerous; Apart from the Punic wars, everything is really attributed to me; Humility is a wonderful virtue. But not when it is exercised in the tax return “.

A formidable mask wearer. A Jesuit musketeer who sinks his shot when you least expect it. Dazzling, cold, unexpected. A nonconformist dandy, with his own rules, limits, excesses and boundaries. The appearance in the film Il Tassinaro di Sordithe stop at the passage of Falcao to Inter, the yellow Operation via Appia. The Honorable Trombetta, “Dad actually found himself with him in a train car. And from there the gag was born ”(Liliana de Curtis, daughter of Totò). Pop icon, closer to Oscar Wilde and Marilyn Monroe than to Giorgio La Pira and Papa Luciani. Terribly plotting and elusive. Merciful and devoted. Good-natured and sweetly ruthless. A most illustrious cardinal Caesaropapist in the service of a Medici Republic. Undisputed tactician but questionable statesman.

Pupil of the greatest Italian politician, Alcide De Gasperi. A teacher, a ‘father’, perhaps betrayed. Seven lives like cats, a bit like his governments. A long existence to envelop the myth, increased by the persistence of his reign: “The secret of human existence lies not only in living, but also in knowing what one lives for” (F. Dostoevskij). Leopard fox from detective novels with crimes of passion with a political background. Bright and dark. Always present, as much as absent. There is and there isn’t. Visible and invisible. Confusing and unmistakable. It leaves very small traces, but erases the most compromising ones. Everything is attributable to him but nothing or little that confirms his involvement. It moves with extreme cunning, delicacy, subtlety. Eternal negotiator, historian of compromise, player on several tables (even in the diplomatic field), he has always had the gift not so much of foresight as of momentary, instantaneous action. A cold and clear mind, as capable as it is dangerous. Already as a boy, Alcide De Gasperi, observing his strengths and weaknesses, had this to say: “He is a boy so capable of anything that he can become capable of anything”. Undersecretary with De Gasperi, Minister of the Republic (over 30 ministerial posts), president of the Council seven times and senator for life, appointed by Cossiga.

A current at his service weak in number but fearful and ‘armed’ as the Prussian army of Frederick William I: Franco Evangelisti, Paolo Cirino Pomicino (called O Minister), Vito Ciancimino, Claudio Vitalone, Cardinal Fiorenzo Angelini (His Health, having been Minister of Health of the Holy See). Nino Cristofori, Salvo Lima, you can and rich Sicilian politician; Vittorio Sbardella (known as the Shark), Giuseppe Ciarrapico… and then many, many unsuspected Andreottians scattered among the majority and opposition banks. “Andreottians are everywhere“, Repeated with suspicious air at every decisive vote the most authoritative exponents of political parties, yet he was there, sitting, almost motionless, waiting for the verdict ‘without batting an eye’. A diplomatique to Lamberto Scannabecchi (Pope Honorius II) but as skilful and contemptuous of danger as Gioacchino Murat. Brilliant at establishing historic triple alliances (CAF), when the moment called for it.

Illuminating the likelihood found in the Letter to the Ten (N. Machiavelli, of June 26, 1502): ” […] never rests or experiences fatigue or danger: […] which things make him victorious and formidable, added with perpetual fortune”(The portrait is by Cesare Borgia). He drew hidden sympathies even among the Communists, so much so that the emergency government of March 16, 1978 was the one who presided over it. Perhaps the sympathy that fascinates the winners. Or perhaps the captivating sex appeal of the Christian Democrat school, the best in the preference hunting, as the Andreottian custodian Franco Evangelisti claimed. And if Andreotti was not Andreotti, as he has always declared himself, then we could say that Andreotti was he, the friend, the factotum Franco, the architect of andreottism. The surveyor of the political-party balance of the current Spring. The joke “to Fra ‘che ti serve” with which Gaetano Caltagirone greeted his friend Franco at every call, who in high school was classmate of Tonino Tatò, Berlinguer’s historical secretary, has remained famous. The ending between Andreotti and Evangelisti, however, was tragic, with the latter starting to collaborate with the magistrates also talking about the relationship between the eternal DC and the mafia.

A bond that touches Andreotti every time he browses through his long life, so much so that Ciccio Ingrassia (on the famous meeting Riina-Andreotti): “I don’t know if they met. But rest assured that if they met they kissed… “. There are a thousand souls, faces, deceptions, countless and indecipherable suspicions that revolve around this political figure. Who was and who is Andreotti perhaps in the end will remain one of the greatest Italian mysteries. The man of mysteries will remain shrouded in mystery. Perhaps it has always been his defensive crusader shield. But Andreotti is not only the symbol of power: a closed, patronizing, oligarchic, theocratic, courtier and medieval power.

Andreotti is the bridge between Italy and the Vaticanthe mediator between the West and the Arab world, the man of trust of the United States to whom Kissinger he recognized light and shadow in his work. Andreotti’s is a line of thought that spans centuries of history: the investiture struggles and the concordat of Worms, the count and bloodthirsty bishops, the legends of Rennes-le-Chateau, diplomacy, richelieunism and Machiavellianism, war cold, the fall of the Monarchy and the First Republic. The longest and most disturbing nights of Italian politics. A prelate prince, invested with temporal and “spiritual” powers (understood in a profoundly secular and figurative sense), a perfect plenipotentiary ambassador, comparable for intelligence and amazing tactical moves to Julius Caesar of the De Bello Gallico. A fine and acute intelligence.

A Romanesque language accurate and linear. A supreme speaker, but never an orator. Author of a cynical and immobile politics, however poor and weak. Unprejudiced to the extreme but always composed and polite in his game of conquering the highest step, of due gratitude and of the most aphrodisiac power. Andreotti was born on January 14, 1919 when Vittorio Emanuele Orlando was president of the Council of the Kingdom of Italy, even if he liked to specify “in 1919 the PPI di Sturzo, fascism and myself were born. Of all three I am the only one left ”, and died on 6 May 2013 with the Prime Minister of the Italian Republic Enrico Letta, grandson of that Gianni, perhaps the only true heir to part of Andreotti’s Roman legacy. When he left he was 94, with a parliamentary ‘reign’ that lasted 68 years, but considering that he is “posthumous to himself” and knowing the character, let’s not be surprised by any twists. The story – after all – continues.

Giulio Andreotti, the longest-lived and most mysterious politician in the history of the Republic