Hearing a recent piece about Hugh O’Neill on this programme led me to thinking about Anita Garibaldi, the wife of the nineteenth century Italian revolutionary, Guiseppe Garibaldi. If you’ve been to the church of St. Pietro de Montorio in Rome then you may already know of the reputed connection between these two figures.
My husband and I climbed the hill to that church last month. We were on a sort of pilgrimage. My husband, an actor, played the part of Hugh O’Neill in Brian Friel’s Making History in Rome when he was just starting out. Now, thirteen years later, he is due to play it again in September but this time for our own company Ouroboros. As any actor’s family can testify, the characters of a play come to live with you during the painstaking work involved in preparing for a show. We’ve lived with O’Neill for some time now and the journey to his grave held personal meaning for both of us.
The sacristan was businesslike. With a practised ease he pulled back the carpet and revealed the intricately ornamented tombstones of O’Neill and his son, and beside them the O’Donnell brothers. Set in a very plain floor they stand out. We stood beside them in silence. A shaft of sunlight suddenly pierced the interior gloom of the church and fell across the jewelled colours of the Red Hand of Ulster.
St. Pietro is perched on the side of the Janiculum Hill not far from the site of one of the fiercest battles for Italian unity. In 1849 Garibaldi led an army against French troops sent to restore papal rule over Rome. At the crest of the hill is a magnificent statute of Garibaldi but further down and off to one side is a monument to his soldier wife Anita.
Legend has it that after Anita died Garibaldi, devastated by grief, ordered the church to be stripped of its marble in order to create a monument to his wife. However he gave strict instructions that O’Neill’s tombstone should not be touched. “I have done for Italy what O’Neill tried to do for Ireland” he is reputed to have said.
We went down the hill to look at the statue of Anita Garibaldi. She is on horseback with a child in one arm and a musket in the other. “You’d think she could have got a babysitter for the Revolution” was one irreverent muttering. Later I learned that Anita was Brazilian; Garibaldi met her in Rio where they joined in the cause of founding a Brazilian republic. Returning to fight for a united Italy Anita was six months pregnant when she took part in the battle on the Janiculum Hill. On their retreat from Rome she died in childbirth at the side of a road. I now understand why she’s carrying a child and it made me think of her many nineteenth century sisters who died in the same way.
Legend and fact are often distant relations. Anita Garibaldi’s statue was only erected in 1932 so it is not made from the marble of the church. Hugh O’Neill’s tombstone was removed from St. Pietro by ransacking French troops during the Italian Revolution. It was rescued by an Irish priest who had it reinstalled in the floor of the church. Neither of them is buried where they should be: Anita’s body was dug up by dogs and later cremated. O’Neill’s body was moved; nobody knows when or to where. His tombstone is actually an empty grave hidden year round under a carpet. Her statue is sadly neglected and the base is covered in graffiti. Both monuments acknowledge a public and private history. O’Neill’s son was buried with him; Anita’s child died with her.
Although there may not be an historical connection between Hugh O’Neill and Anita Garibaldi after all, there is an emotional one. As histories fade it is easy to forget the huge sacrifices that people have made for social justice and personal liberty. In this case it was a journey which led one old man from Ireland and, over two hundred years later, one young woman from Brazil, to die in Rome.

Elaine Sisson
Broadcast on RTE1 Sunday Miscellany 28th August 2005