Читать книгу The Dwelling Place of Wonder - Harry L. Serio - Страница 7

Genealogies tend to be boring. Only very few people are interested in the family trees of others, unless they happen to be a monarch, president, or someone of great renown. The writer of Matthew’s gospel includes the genealogy of Jesus, which contains some very notable celebrities of the Bible. It also contains some rather seedy characters that could embarrass some descendants.

Included among Jesus’ ancestors are Abraham, who put his own wife at risk in order to save himself; Jacob, who lied and cheated his brother out of his birthright; Tamar, a prostitute who fornicated with her father-in-law to produce a child; Rahab, a Canaanite spy and prostitute; Ruth, a foreigner, who had a questionable encounter with Boaz after he got drunk; David, an adulterer, who had Bathsheba’s husband placed in the front line of battle to cover up his sin; and Solomon, who had three hundred concubines and worshipped Astarte, the Phoenician goddess of love and fertility. With such a background it is no wonder that the church emphasized the virgin birth of Jesus.

My own family probably has its own cast of colorful characters. I have learned that my father’s family descended from an old and distinguished Italian line that traces its origins to the nobility of Naples. A genealogy requested by my cousin, Don Ciro Maria Serio, a priest in the town of Nocera Inferiore where many of the Serios lived, gives this brief history:

The Serios belong among the noble families of Naples. A branch was joined to the patrician family of Ostuni (Lecce) resulting, in the 18th century, in the births of Antonio and Ludovico Serio in Vicolo Equense in 1748. Ludovico was an extemporaneous poet from 1771. He was a professor of eloquent Italian at the University of Naples. He died fighting on the banks of the Sebeto (a little river of the Campania region which feeds into the Gulf of Naples). The battle pitted the Neopolitan soldiers defending the Holy Faith against the followers of the Partenopean Republic.

Various members of the House of Serio held power in the Reign of the Two Sicilies (Regno delle due Sicilie) under Ferdinand IV in 1854. The Serio family flourished and enjoyed nobility in Sicily as well as Naples.

The brevity of this description has led me to speculate on who was left out of the family tree and why. In 1955, Don Ciro requested the Instituto Genealogico Italiano to research the Serio family crest. They provided gratis the following description:

The antique helmet is placed on the shield as a remembrance of the cavalier, the military tasks, and also the expeditions to the Holy Land. The crown is that of nobility because the Serio had this distinction. The lion is the most noble animal of heraldry. The symbol represented the Command, the Grandeur, and Magnanimity. The lion holding the compass is showing the council of the strong and just man, the profound courage and knowledge of the world. The stars are configured to indicate the brightness of the future heirs. The undulating patterns are generally emblematic of the course of water and of the ocean waves.

The crest symbolizes the River Serio (a river of the province of Bergamo which feeds the Adda and subsequently joins the Po and with these feeds the Gulf of Venice and then the Adriatic Sea) and represents the meaning spoken by the name Serio.

The information was obtained from the original framed crest owned by Fr. Ciro. Since his death, the crest is in possession of his niece, Maria Picaro, in Nocera Inferiore. In the 1980’s, Emilio Serio, working from a photograph of the crest and a heraldric description, painted the Serio family crest that was distributed to the New Jersey clan of Luigi Serio.

There is something ironic about the children of poor immigrants displaying an icon of lost nobility and the faded grandeur of past history when they have achieved their own success and placed their own stamp on the heritage they will pass on to their children.

In the new science of epigenetics there is evidence that the life experiences of parents can affect the genetic character of their children so that behavioral traits can be passed down through generations. It may also explain cultural memory, the retention of habits and traditions, as well as the Jungian concept of racial memory. We do inherit more than we think we do from our ancestors.

Today, Serios can be found in abundance in both Campania and Sicily, which appears to be their prime habitat. There is a village in Sicily in which the name Serio is quite common. The territory of southern Italy and Sicily was occupied in ancient times by the Greeks and then by the Romans. After the fall of the Roman Empire when the northern half of Italy was controlled by the Pope and various European princes, the southern half remained in Byzantine hands until it was eventually seized in turn by Saracens, Franks, Catalans, and many others. Southern Italians might have various strains of Greek, Arab, and Spanish in their bloodlines.

There is some irony in that after Anna (one of the daughters of Luigi) married a Lebanese Maronite named Abood, Anna’s brothers and sisters teased her children about their Arab ancestry. Most likely there is Byzantine and Arab blood in the Serio line. On the European continent there probably isn’t any such thing as a pure race. Adolf Hitler’s search for the true Aryan was as elusive as any mythic quest. Almost any family that seeks to discover its own origins will find that its ancestry is mixed. Even the Queen of England is descended from several strains. This is what makes life interesting, diverse, healthy, and human.

Every family has its own story to tell. Families teach us that we are connected, not only to each other, but also to our past, to our roots, to the continuing process that brought us to this time and place and that will continue until physical life ceases on this planet.

Occasionally someone would tell me that he had planned to read the Bible from cover to cover, probably more for penance than insight. But when he came to the “begats,” he found that to be a roadblock around which he felt compelled to make a detour. Who cares whether Joktan was the father of Hazarmaveth? Who were they and why should they be important? The genealogies were nothing more than resources for the strange and obscure names with which the sects would afflict their children.

And yet the genealogies are important—as important as the West African griot, the keeper of the oral tradition who runs his fingers down the memory board or knotted cord reciting the stories of his tribe. To remember the stories and traditions of your family is to provide a bond that unites us not only to our brothers, sisters, cousins, and other contemporary relatives, but also to the long line of our forebears stretching back as far as recorded history and memory permit.

In this day of the “Great Disconnect,” when the world is expanding exponentially, moving us away from one another, it is so important to remember our stories and pass them on to our children.