By Jack Lord
I do not seek to defend organized crime, nor moralize. I seek only to understand from a new
perspective why this recurrence exists in a way that pure rationality cannot understand. I do not
claim that anything I say is objectively true, it is rather to seek to identify the structures behind
this historical and continuing pattern. In this way, I will use Il Camorrista (1986), directed by
Giuseppe Tornatore, as a movie that allows the viewer to gain insight into this pattern which
still haunts Southern Italy.
The crime that haunts Southern Italy today is the beheading of Conradin, the boy king
who rode down Italy toward Palermo to reclaim his throne as King of Sicily. Conradin belonged
to the Hohenstaufen line. His grandfather was Frederick II, stupor mundi. Frederick II was the
King of Sicily, King of Jerusalem, and Holy Roman Emperor. He was German, yet his rule saw
Palermo and Southern Italy more broadly as the center of his court.
As king, he embraced the contradictions to be found in Sicily’s location as the center of the
Mediterranean. Palermo allowed for the convergence of Greek, Italian, Arab, Jewish, and
Norman influence to develop into a city blessed by its contradictions, rather than destroyed for
them. Frederick II had deep issues with the Pope. He was heretical, and excommunicated four times
from the church. But the people he governed over recognized him as king. His influence can still
be seen in the deeply syncretic culture of Southern Italy.
Frederick II died in 1250 and Conradin was born March 25, 1252. This day is important;
he was born on the Feast of the Annunciation. I will get back to this later, but this shows the
Marian structure buried deep in Southern Italy. There was no preparation for Conradin as the
king, nobody to bear what he was meant to do. But the people recognized his role.
At two years of age, following his father’s death, he became the Duke of Swabia, King of
Jerusalem, and King of Sicily. He lived his early life in German lands, but as a Hohenstaufen, his
heart was directed toward Palermo. Little information remains about Conradin, except that his beauty
and form implicitly lead to him to be recognized as King.
Conradin’s relative Manfred served as his regent in Sicily, but he was murdered by the
Usurper, Charles of Anjou. Following this event was the recognition of Conradin’s true purpose,
to become the boy king who reclaims the throne not through violence but because of instinctual
recognition of his leadership. He is not even 14, yet he understands his role for the people who
recognize his fate.
At 15 years old, he crosses the Alps. He rides from Germany to Italy to reclaim the
throne, not out of pursuit of power but duty. Conradin’s motive cannot even be reduced to
restoring his family to the line. It is more pure. He lives when the divine right of kings is hidden
away but still instinctually felt. He is not simply a continuation of the Hohenstaufen line; he is
the “why” behind the kingdom of Sicily. He is the explanation of Frederick II’s Sicily as a center
of high culture, so that one day Conradin can rule.
Conradin’s problem is not his youth; he shined with youth. He did not seek power for
power’s sake but because he was what the king should be. As he moved down to Italy, he did not
need war, but recognition of his throne. And the people saw it before he could even know. He
was too pure for the world he was brought into. And still, he would lead for the world. He rode
into Rome without threatening, and instead revealing. The gaze of the city, the city where
Romulus crowned himself, where Augustus became emperor, recognized him.
Conradin’s purity breaks Machiavellianism. He does not need to be feared because he is
already recognized. The love the people have for him is not love in the usual sense, it is love that
animates the world.
But at 16, Conradin was captured by the forces of the Usurper. He was betrayed and his
rightful kingdom would now cut off his head in Naples. Conradin would never get his throne in
Palermo. But Conradin did not plead; he recognized his fate. He did not fail; he was too pure for
the world to contain. And that’s why he was beheaded. To sever all legitimacy to the people. To
sever the notion to the people of the boy king who rises not by fear but recognition.
That is also why he was beheaded, not killed in another way. It was symbolic, the
destruction of the form recognized to rule. Following his execution, Southern Italy never had a
king whose legitimacy did not come from force, but recognition.
And remember, when Rome recognized him, he was seen as his potential as a great king.
But in Naples, they saw his full form as he was beheaded. He was their version of the Davidic
king. He was recognized as the ideal severed. Of the true king killed for his power to lead by
recognition of the people by the usurpers. And ever since, there has never been a legitimate state
that rules by recognition, not force upon the people.
A paradox is created here. Conradin by his execution at 16 never loses his purity. He is
still instinctually remembered as the one too pure, too real, too good for the world. His death
saves him from the necessary actions of the king. He becomes the ideal of Southern Italian
legitimacy, while the land is forced into over 750 years without a ruler worthy of the land. He is
raised towards light, while the land descends into darkness. The Hohenstaufen line died with
Conradin, and without him, power was foreign and operated on fear, not recognition. The beautiful land of Naples is marked by his execution. Vesuvius does not remind the city of
Pompeii anymore, but rather the loss of the boy king.
Southern Italy following this point is marked by this contradiction. In reality, it is ruled
still by usurpers. New versions of Charles of Anjou. Foreign occupiers rather than recognized
legitimacy. The Hohenstaufen line ends pure, too pure. It can’t be properly integrated. There is
no king who destroys the memory of Frederick II. Rather it ends with the king purer than
Frederick II. The perfect king yet beheaded before he could rule.
Remember Conradin is beheaded in Naples. Rome saw the potential of a great king,
Naples saw the beheading of the best king, the only structural legitimacy which could live up to
the ideal of a monarch. And between Naples and Rome is where the metaphysical rift line
between North and Southern Italy lies. The North remembers great kings, the South remembers
the ideal Monarch beheaded.
Look further at Rome, Florence, and Venice. They are all built with the recognition of
great but obviously flawed kings. Because that is how reality works. Nobody who rules can be
perfect. But Naples, even with its architecture, its beautiful location, the university founded by
Frederick II; Conradin’s beheading marks what could have been. Every missing cathedral, every
missing center of knowledge. That is all marked on the land.
This is why modernity and horizontal legitimacy could never truly take a place in
Southern Italy. Because it began in the usurping and murder of the ideal, not structural degeneration
of the king due to the conflict of the ideal with the reality of ruling a land. When a land sees the
ideal beheaded for being too recognized for the world to handle, modernity cannot be properly
integrated into the culture. Vertical structures are remembered as too pure for their removal.
And this is felt by the people of the land. Maybe not consciously but instinctively. The
contradiction of a golden age ended because it was too golden, rather than losing its shine.
Following Conradin’s death, the structure of recognized legitimacy before formal
legitimacy becomes crystalized. There is a purity to Conradin that haunts the land. Where
legitimacy by recognition, not law, is earned. And it’s the recognition itself that points to this.
This haunting left by Conradin continually resurfaces. But the structure for Conradin to
be given his crown is gone. His beheading cut the purity of recognition. This is why the noble
criminal recurs. The noble criminal is not Conradin. He is what happens to the world which
beheads Conradin.
In Il Camorrista, the Professor is shown as the archetype for the noble criminal. As the
noble criminal, he does not become out of criminality, but recognition.
The noble criminal’s first act, the act that forces him into a life of crime, is never a
conscious act. It is prerational, it is from the law not known but recognized. Think of it as what
you think the code of Conradin is. It’s not written, it felt. It’s what the body recognizes Conradin
would do had he lived. It’s inherently why Omerta is silent.
For the Professor, this was the violence he used following a man touching his sister,
Rosaria. What led him to prison. But the violence is not to be simply seen as a crime of passion
or defense of family honor. You must first watch the film for it to make sense.
The uncomfortable relationship between the Professor and his sister is the key to figuring
this out. Though his sister by blood, the film portrays her in a different way. The film positions
her as a figure that you read as his wife, while knowing it is his sister. This uncomfortable
situation is not incestuous, it is something deeper. She is a part of him. She is the feminine side of his spirit. They are too interconnected. She recognizes him as who he truly is and all that implies. And this is why he kills over her. Because in that moment, he saw the usurpers beheading Conradin. The Professor is not Conradin, he is the rage that Conradin was too pure for. He is not the ideal, he is what comes in a world where the ideal was beheaded. And in this act his fate is
sealed. He is outside of legitimacy, but his rage is too much to contain now. He becomes a
criminal not out of desire, but by a call which he must answer. In a better world he would be the
knight of Conradin, now he is the revenge of a land that denied Conradin. Without the crown, he is
the rage of its absence. He must defend Omerta despite no legitimate means.
The Professor’s act becomes a distorted annunciation to his sister, who must become the
archetypal Mary. The Mater Dolorosa. Remember her name is Rosaria; of course she is Marian
by nature. She feels the prophecy of Simeon. She recognizes a sword will pierce her soul as
many reject the Professor. She breaks down in weeping not due to the Professor’s act, but
because she must bear the suffering of the world as Mary did. In the act, she feels the Seven
Sorrows of Mary. She sees clearly not what is going to happen, but what will. As the one who
recognizes the Professor, she will bear the suffering of a world without the necessary structure to
contain his rage. And she becomes his voice for the world while in the exile of the prison. The
world wouldn’t crown Conradin, so she must crown the Professor.
This is what makes the Professor’s rise in the prison deeper than the rise of power. It is
the call to fate instead. The disrespect towards the one who recognized him, his Mater Dolorosa,
is the source of his power. And others recognize this in him. Throughout the prison, he builds
power not by violence but being recognized to lead. And this is also seen by his structure of
leadership more generally. The Professor does not lead because he controls violence, he controls
violence through recognition forcing him to lead. The violence shown is never done to gain
control but as recognition of the Professor.
This idea of the Professor’s Camorra as an inverted preservation of recognition-based
legitimacy can be seen by the movie’s detail of blood ritual in the mafia. The rituals shown were
the most intense mafia blood rituals I have seen in film. The ritual has the Professor and the
initiate both create a cut on their wrist and then shake hands where their blood crosses together.
The ritual does not show force, but recognition of a code above all else. The ritual sees the two
men become one united in their biology, recognizing a silence which rules. The Professor does
not use this to gain power, it is because it is the only way to seal a bond that true is through ritual
which becomes sacred initiation.
This can also be seen by what the Professor’s reformed Camorra becomes. It does not
seek state-based legitimacy, but recognition. The Camorra openly accepts their illegitimacy.
They do not seek reform, but to recognize what they must become as a vertical structure outside
of law. This is why the Professor is seen to never moralize nor support the Camorra as organized
crime. He simply recognizes that is what the role of an illegitimate structure is. Inherently, since
he must work outside the law, he becomes illegitimate. Because criminals are recognized as
the ones to supply vices, his Camorra supplies vices. It is a premoral structure. It does not seek if
they should but recognize what they must.
In this way his Camorra becomes truer to the world than the Capital or the State. It only
operates by how the world functions. For example, if capitalism is about how the best business
for their market will thrive against competition, is that not what his Camorra becomes? Certainly,
he breaks the libertarian theory, but that’s the point. He does not play Laissez Faire; he recognizes
what capitalism really is. He never seeks to fix the problems that are in place, just figure out
what they mean for his actions.
That is even why he is able to become stronger than legitimate structures; he never
pretends that law governs. He seeks the truth about his position called, rather than the
justifications. He doesn’t seek to justify his act, just recognize what he must do.
We see this most clearly in the way that he becomes a transcendent figure as you watch
the film. As he grows in power, he only becomes more of himself and power flows out of him,
not to him. But as an individual he stops even taking individual actions; he exists as collective
action. Despite controlling the most prolific crime group in Naples, he is still a man living within
prison. He is just shown in the prison, chilling in his pajamas with recognized privileges even by
the prison itself, because recognition cannot be denied, even if it is not objectively true.
Let’s go to his courtroom scenes as well, because this shows the idea of a transcendent
figure. The Professor is not portrayed as the defendant, but the metaphysical judge, the
declaration of truth. The Italian justice system in the scene is shown as a joke in comparison to
the radiance of the Professor. He is on trial, but instead it becomes a time to practice standup
comedy. In that courtroom, it is shown that the state has no standing with the people compared to
the Professor. In fact, that is the entire movie. Everybody recognizes the Professor for what he is.
Not that he is good, not that he is evil, as he is. The state might be supported against the
Professor, but never just because it is. Always as a means, never as the end. But the Professor?
Always as an end, the means just structure around him.
In the trial, the Professor is indirectly compared to Jesus in front of Pontius Pilate. At one
point, the dynamic between him and the state mirrors the Gospels. It highlights the absurdity of
denying the Professor; they only ask because they recognize him. It also refers to the idea that
the South has been without kings, but governors. Anyway, it’s ridiculous because that is not the
role of Camorra boss. No king can rise except one recognized as Conradin’s successor.
This absurdity of illegitimate structure being a truer power than the state itself is again
shown during the kidnapping of the politician. Despite the state constantly bothering the
Camorra, when they need power against other illegitimate actors like the Red Brigades, the
The professor is still recognized as the one worthy of command. As the work needs completion over
explanation, the Professor is the one who is called.
This also highlights the way that illegitimate yet recognition-based vertical structures
exist as a quiet necessity within the horizontal state. Vices always will find people to supply
them. In the most important of situations, the vertical is called upon to protect the state. And
even when it won’t be legitimized, even when the Professor senses he can use this as power over
the state, he recognizes his role. He never uses this dynamic to gain legitimacy despite his ability
to in crisis.
In fact, the distinctly vertical nature of the Camorra allows their success in modernity as
they are the only structures that benefit from the realism organized crime needs to operate. The
vertical structure minimizes the violence while retaining the ability for collective action.
The power the Professor unleashes is always pure to recognition. Even when he violently
orders the death of those unloyal to him, there is always a structure that it follows. They are
ordered as, “this is what is,” not, “this is what I think should be done.” He isn’t even a tyrant. He can’t move away from his own recognition-based code. This can be seen in how if he executes his closest
men, there is an additional ritual given to the act. For his lower members, those who don’t interact
with him, it is without warning. But his inner circle, they are first given the kiss of death. They
must be ritually confirmed as outside of the Camorra, prior to action taken against them.
This framework is required to understanding the absolute zero-tolerance policy which is
upheld for disloyalty and working with the state. Because without it, Alfredo’s death is in vain. Violence for violence’s sake. Alfredo snitches on the Professor, not to have the Professor arrested,
but to save his life. And yet he’s still met with the kiss of death.
This makes sense, however, when you apply this logic to Conradin. He was beheaded after
betrayal led him to be handed to the usurper. He never had the opportunity to die in battle. And
that’s why the Professor’s Camorra cannot tolerate working with the state even to save the
Professor. Because if fate calls the Professor to die, it will be in battle, rather than to the forces of the usurper. Had Conradin died at battle, at least he would have had a glorious death, reminding the
people of a king who cared too much for the land than his own survival. But instead, his death
saw the ritual severing of recognition. That’s why Alfredo had to go. That’s why he received the
kiss of death. It is an inversion of Judas’ kiss. The kiss of death marks the man as the betrayer. A
betrayer of the form of Judas, Brutus, Cassius. That’s why it’s only given to men from the
Professor’s inner circle.