The Divine Language: Art and Faith According to Giustiniani. Salerno, Italy. Sounds, Lights and Words Martyrs and Maryrion. Like the applause of a single hand, the inextricably intertwined mysteries of destiny and divine providence sounded in melodious contrasts in the sayings and deeds of the Desert Fathers. What is a blessing for Sisoe, will be a prohibition and a danger for Hilarion; if the scribe is not fast enough to engrave Barsanuphius' words exactly, it means that, just as he engraves them, God wants them engraved and, thus engraved, they will operate; and if the pestilential oil were not mysteriously destined for the sick old man, the distracted disciple would put honey in his polenta. Sounds, lights and words of the desert fathers are martyrs, or testimonies. From the sayings of the desert fathers: «N. 592/49 (P.E., II, 18, 10): “Abbot Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, said: «It is often said among you: “Where is the persecution to become martyrs?”. Be a martyr in conscience, die to sin, mortify the earthly organs and you will be a martyr of intention. The martyrs fought against kings and magistrates, you too have an adversary, the devil, king of sin, and as magistrates the demons. They had before them the table of victims and the altar and, abomination of idolatry, an execrable idol»”. Martyrion: the holy place marked by the death of a martyr was said. At the time of bloody persecutions, chapels and altars were erected over the Christian martyria. Today, a true Martyrion of sounds-lights-colors is the large canvas by the master Bruno Giustiniani, where lights, shadows and colors narrate, merging, yesterday and today, in the blood shed by the young men of Chios. On April 14, 1566, with an imposing fleet of eighty galleys, Kapudanpascià Pialì  (or “Paoli”, as in other sources) arrives at the port of Chios with a subtle betrayal asking to land as friends, but, as soon as they landed, they called the head of the Maona, the mayor Vincenzo Giustiniani, the bishop Timoteo Giustiniani and the 12 governors and had them imprisoned. This did not prevent the island from being violently sacked: the Churches were all destroyed or converted into Mosques. Vincenzo Giustiniani with the other 12 governors and the other most prominent Giustiniani were taken to Constantinople. At the State Archives of Genoa a document, addressed to Cardinal Giovanni Battista Cicala (or Cigala), reports that from the island of Chios, after the Ottoman conquest of 1566, 200 ("beautiful") young men were kidnapped and taken to Constantinople. Among these two hundred, also the "Giustinian martyrs": twenty-one young men between 12 and 16 years old separated from their parents, forced to renounce the Catholic faith and enlist in the Janissary corps. 18 of them were killed after atrocious torture, on September 6, 1566. Pope Pius V must have appreciated them, he who wanted to be only the spiritual leader of Christianity and therefore even the thought of waging war against anyone was foreign to him. And yet, it was precisely to him that the task fell to prepare the largest naval battle ever fought with rowing ships and, after long negotiations, it was possible to unite the Holy See, Spain and the Venetian Republic in a league. Under the command of Don John of Austria, Philip II's half-brother, the Christian fleet, after a heroic fight, managed to defeat the Turks at Lepanto and win a resounding victory on October 7, 1571. Unfortunately, shortly after the death of Pius V, due to the selfishness of the allies, it was disbanded. Since the victory of Lepanto had been achieved on October 7, which fell that year on the first Sunday of the month, the day on which processions were held in honor of the Queen of the Rosary, the Pope attributed it to the intercession of the Madonna. Therefore, on March 17, 1572, it was decided that the feast of Our Lady of Victory should be celebrated on October 7 (a feast that by order of Gregory the Thirteenth [April 1, 1573] was transferred to the first Sunday of October and called the feast of the Queen of the Rosary). The red color of the blood of the young Giustiniani((⏱️=400)) In 1347, the Republic of Genoa had entrusted a company of merchants, a so-called maona, with the administration and commercial exploitation of the island of Chios (Chio or Scio) in the Aegean Sea, which had been reconquered the year before. The members of the maona in 1362 established the Albergo dei Giustiniani. The members added the Giustiniani surname to their own: Giustiniani Recanelli, Giustiniani di Negro, Giustiniani Banca, Giustiniani Longhi, Giustiniani Ughetti, etc. Marriages took place between Giustiniani families: the members thus strengthened the internal economic and political cohesion. In 1363 the Byzantine emperor granted the Giustiniani family the political lordship of the island. The family made considerable profits from the extraction of mastic and the trade of alum. In the Mus eo Byzantine of Chios a collection of Byzantine and post-Byzantine art, including icons, frescoes and manuscripts, recalls these and other events, as well as more than 10,000 books and manuscripts, as well as seminars and conferences on Byzantine art, history and culture… in short a literary Cenacle, like here in Salerno. On the basis of published and unpublished sources, it was possible to reconstruct some episodes of the life of Francesco Giustiniani de Garibaldo, a Maonese of Chios, around the middle of the fifteenth century. In the summer of 1457 his presence is attested in Chios, where he had probably arrived a few months earlier, on board the ship of Oberto Squarciafico – in which the cargo of goods from his ship had been transferred, rendered unnavigabilis due to a serious storm of sea and wind that had surprised him in the waters of Cephalonia – and where he died on the following 30 September. At the request of two of his relatives, his will was published in Genoese on the island, according to the procedure established by the legislation in force.
The history of the Giustiniani, lords of Chios, or rather that of their hotel, or rather the consortium of families that held the monopoly of the island's Maona for centuries, is full of interest starting from the level of family ties. Particularly notable is the case of the Giustiniani di Pantaleo, who arrived in Modone following the Venetian armies after the Peace of Carlowitz (1699), and even more so that of the Giustiniani di Alessandro, which included not only financiers and merchants. Gio. Costantino, for example, moved to Cattaro, where in 1742 he married Vincenza, daughter of Count Michele Racovich. He then held numerous public offices in Venetian Dalmatia, such as the chancellorship of Curzola, lived for a long time in Venice and in 1769 obtained membership in the Genoese nobility. His son Alessandro Ippolito became a standard-bearer of the Venetian army and finally settled in Genoa (1770). Family events that overall give us a mix of cultures and identities that is typical of the history of the Mediterranean and its elites.