The piece was a headline-grabber, not least because Montanari listed the
question marks hanging over the new director, “Professor” Marino Massimo De
Caro: “Whatever the case, it’s beyond belief that one of Italy’s great
cultural shrines should be entrusted to a denizen of the ‘undergrowth’
described by Ferruccio Sansa and Claudio Gatti in their recently published
book. De Caro is the middle man in the Venezuelan oil affair, ‘one of the
most spectacular instances of convergence between Berlusconi supporters and
D’Alema’s group’”. De Caro is also honorary consul for Congo, former
assistant of Senator Carlo Corbinelli, former head of PR in north-eastern
Italy for the public-sector pension fund INPDAP, executive vice-president
from 2007 to 2010 of wind farm and solar energy firm Avelar Energia, owned
by Russian oligarch Victor Vekselberg, former owner of an antiquarian
bookshop in Verona, and former partner in the Buenos Aires antiquarian
bookshop Imago Mundi owned by Daniel Guido Pastore, himself involved in
Spain in inquiries into the theft of books from the national library in
Madrid and the Zaragoza library.

De Caro entered ministry circles thanks to Giancarlo Galan, as a note from
the ministry reveals: “Dr. Marino Massimo De Caro was invited to
collaborate with the ministry by Minister Giancarlo Galan on 15 April 2011
as an expert consultant on issues concerning relations with the business
system in the arts and publishing sectors, and on topics relating to the
implementation of regulations concerning authorisation to build and operate
facilities for the production of energy from renewable sources, and their
appropriate insertion into the landscape. On 15 December 2011, Minister
Lorenzo Ornaghi confirmed Dr. Marino Massimo De Caro’s appointment, along
with those of other advisers to Minister Galan, as an expert consultant on
issues concerning relations with the business system in the arts and
publishing sectors”.

Here is a passage from Gatti and Sansa’s book *Il sottobosco *[The
Undergrowth] referring to a phone tap: “On 27 December 2007, De Caro
complained about a Carabinieri captain from the artistic heritage unit in
Monza who was ‘bothering’ him about a book purchased at a public auction in
Switzerland”. He is under investigation for handling stolen goods, he says,
and this has hampered his appointment as honorary consul of Congo since the
foreign ministry will not grant approval. (...) On 17 July 2009, De Caro
was finally able to relax when Milan deputy public prosecutor Maria Letizia
Mannella ‘established that the incunabulum has not been physically
recovered, despite repeated searches’, and found there was no case to
answer. In other words, since the allegedly stolen goods could not be
traced and the three individuals involved were accusing each other, the
prosecutor decided no further action need be taken”. No further action. But
among all the candidates, were there none with an unblemished record to
direct a library whose ancient books had already been ransacked in past
decades?

The day after Montanari’s protest, De Caro explained to the *Corriere del
Mezzogiorno *that he his CV was kosher: “I graduated from Siena and I
taught history and technology of publishing on the master’s course at the
University of Verona”. He added: “I consulted for Cardinal Mejia, the
Vatican librarian, I published a book on Galileo and I was director of the
library at Orvieto cathedral”. De Caro went on to explain to Il Mattino
newspaper: “My grandfather’s godfather was Benedetto Croce. My family,
which passed down the title of Princes of Lampedusa, merged with the famous
Tomasis thus becoming di Lampedusa, something we are proud of”.

“Goodness gracious me!” might have been the reaction of comedian Totò, who
himself claimed the title His Imperial Highness Antonio Porfirogenito,
descended from Costantinople’s Focas dynasty, Angelo Flavio Ducas Comneno
of Byzantium, prince of Cilicia, Macedonia, Dardania, Thessaly, Pontus,
Moldava, Illyria and the Peloponnese, Duke of Cyprus and Epirus, Count and
Duke of Drivasto and Durazzo. “Not true” came the reply the next day, again
in *Il Mattino*, from the real Prince Gioacchino Lanza Tomasi: “The
librarian’s assertions about his descent from the princes of Lampedusa are
fabrications. The title of prince of Lampedusa was granted by Charles II of
Spain to Ferdinando Tomasi in 1667. The Caros therefore have no claim
whatsoever to the title of prince of Lampedusa. ... Our egregious librarian
should have all this at his fingertips. And I would advise the prior of the
Girolamini to keep a close eye on an archivist who prefers a shared surname
to supporting documentation”.

OK, then, but he’s still a professor. That’s what it says in a press
release from Il Buongoverno, a national association established in Milan
and “chaired by Senator Riccardo Villari, with Marcello Dell’Utri as
honorary national chair. The secretary is Senator Salvatore Piscitelli.
(...) National organising secretary is Professor Marino Masimo De Caro”.
Goodness gracious me again! It’s a pity that even though official
ministerial notes and statements repeatedly refer to him as “doctor”, De
Caro never actually graduated from the University of Siena, where he
enrolled as a law student in 1992-93 and remained a student until 2002. Nor
does the computer at the University of Verona have the least record of our
hero’s having taught there.

But the funniest part of the story comes last. Even before all the tweaks
were applied to his self-celebratory CV, hundreds of intellectuals were
signing an appeal to the minister Lorenzo Ornaghi to ask him how a library
as important as the Girolamini could be entrusted to “a man bereft of even
the minimum academic qualifications or professional competence to honour
the role”. By yesterday evening, this devastating denunciation had
attracted just under two thousand signatures, including those of Marcello
De Cecco, Ennio Di Nolfo, Dario Fo, Franca Rame, Carlo Ginzburg, Salvatore
Settis, Tullio Gregory, Gustavo Zagrebelsky, Gioacchino Lanza Tomasi,
Adriano La Regina, Gian Giacomo Migone, Alessandra Mottola Molfino
(president of Italia Nostra), Lamberto Maffei (president of the Accademia
dei Lincei), Dacia Maraini, Stefano Parise (president of the Italian
library association), Stefano Rodotà and Rosario Villari among others.

Well, on the very morning when these intellectuals were making their
reservations public, “Doctor” “Prince” “Professor” Marino Massimo De Caro
turned up at the public prosecutor’s office to present formal notification
of a crime. He had just realised that one thousand five hundred books were
missing from the library.

English translation by Giles Watson

*www.watson.it* <http://www.watson.it/>