Welcome history lovers to your monthly-ish treat of history goodness. And there’s a good one for you this time. Murder! Devil worship! And cultural mysteries abound!
Check out my recently released book, Lemuria: A True Story of a Fake Place, and some of my recent appearances on podcasts like Binnall of America: The Revival and Esoteric Book Club. Also, I combined the three parts of The Prostitute, The Prophet, and the Lost Continent into one big blog post for your reading pleasure.
Two great mysteries surround Giovanni Quaranta: his death and his religion. With one possibly being responsible for the other. That Giovanni was found in the bottom of a pond in Providence, Rhode Island in August 1895 isn’t the biggest mystery here. That he was known as a “devil worshiper” around town who practiced bizarre rituals isn’t the strangest thing about this story. No, the biggest mystery lies in just how he knew about those rituals and the major cultural ramifications those lead to.
But for now, we start with a hand, Giovanni’s hand, breaking the surface of Leonard’s Pond. The early morning wind throwing ripples across the surface and around his exposed appendage leading to the discovery of Giovanni’s unfortunate presence there at the bottom. Once the authorities were alerted it took a lot of effort to pull him from the water. His being there for a number of days didn’t help, and also, the 125lb pipe tied to him made matters difficult.
Out from his watery tomb, Giovanni’s body suffered greatly from fish predation, but what was clear was how much he suffered before going in water: multiple facial fractures and contusions, a missing thumb (later found on the banks of the pond and seemingly came off prior to going in the water), one pant pocket ripped out and the other one turned out, and the matter of the 125lb pipe. Of course, from all of that evidence, the police thought it was a clear case of suicide. To them, Giovanni was just another recent Italian immigrant who couldn’t make it in America.
This would be all but case closed if it weren’t for the efforts of an amateur detective duo of a local Italian doctor and a Count from the New York Italian Consulate teaming up to investigate Giovanni’s murder. As crazy as that story sounds, their investigation and findings are just one more mystery, for while they claimed to solve Giovanni’s murder, they did not reveal any names, only that the individual(s) returned to Italy. Every single part of that sounds bonkers, but unfortunately, that’s all we have from this side investigation, which took place the following year.
Another investigation of a sort took place in the immediate aftermath of Giovanni’s death, which is when we learn of his religious practices. The cops went to his boarding house and began rifling through his belongings, where they came across his black notebooks. Some were written in Italian and some were claimed to have been written in a kind of code. But they had a difficult time finding anyone willing to translate the notebooks for them, for everyone they approached called them wicked. Called them evil. And called Giovanni a devil worshiper.
Asking around more was found out about these religious practices. The Providence News published a lengthy and detailed account of Giovanni’s Wednesday, holy night practices which he would corral any and everyone he could to participate with him,
Giovanni began by breaking the handle from his stiletto, and throwing the blade out of the window, to show that he was at peace with all men. There was always a string tied to the blade, but that’s neither here nor there. His next act was to walk slowly around the room seven times with the Sanjak held in front of him to purify the company, and drive away unclean thoughts. Then he dipped either end of the Sanjak in the holy water of the Semsen, and touched it to the open mouths of seven holy roosters, fashioned out of bronze. That ended, he would take up a handful of the consecrated earth from the grave of Sheik Adi, and after rolling it into seven round pills, would swallow them slowly, muttering a prayer after each one, never failing to invite his visitors to partake of the religious meal. A new supply of this earth was sent to him every seven months. After this, and several more details Giovanni would wind up with the Kovechek dance in which he would throw off all his clothing. This dance would last frequently until daylight, or until the Italian dropped senseless, and all the while he would beat time on the door and ceiling with the long Sanjak, offer prayers and beseech Melek-Taus to make him a good Yezidee, or if he couldn’t do that to save for him some of the precious tears to quench hell’s fire. It was a wild and weird ceremony and no Italian was ever known to attend twice.
All of which makes for an intense hang for a Wednesday night and not the best upstairs or downstairs neighbor.
Then, they were able to find someone to translate his notebooks and it turned out that Giovanni had translated large parts of the Yazidi Black Book* providing the complete genealogy of Yazidi sacred figures and the telling of their creation story. In particular, they relate the life and deeds of one Yazidi angel, Malek Taus.
*Now the Black Book and the other Yazidi holy work, Book of Revelation, are all but considered to be forgeries. Pieced together by non-Yazidi from actual accounts of their beliefs with a lot of filler thrown in for good measure.
Melek Taus (or Tawûsî Melek) was one of the original Yazidi angels, but after some rowdiness, he would be banished to hell. There, he spent seven thousand years weeping in repentance in the process, filling seven immense jars full of tears. Having proven his atonement, he was brought back up to join his fellow angels where he demonstrated how reformed he had become.
The fallen angel aspect of Tawûsî Melek’s backstory and its perceived similarities with the Muslim figure Iblis, their Satanic equivalent, have led the Yazidi to be called “devil worshipers” by many Muslims.
The Yazidi (also spelled Yezidi or Ezidi) are a religious/cultural sect found only amongst the Kurdish peoples across Northern Iraq and surrounding countries. For centuries the Yazidi have been targeted and persecuted by various Muslim states and organizations. And still, to this day, they face threats. Following the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq in the early 2010s, the Yazidi faced their most recent brutal genocide at the hands of ISIS attacks.
As the Yazidi have been a source of scorn and persecution amongst some in the Islamic world, they were seen as a source of fascination in the Christian/Western world for centuries. Accounts of the Yazidi from Western travelers have appeared for hundreds of years, and are probably responsible for the bulk of the contents of the Black Book and the Book of Revelation. But the most detailed accounts of Yazidi practices and beliefs originate from Catholic/Christians living with or near Yazidi villages, with the first such work written by Ishak (Ishaq) of Bartella and his work On the Yezidis (1874).
Ishak was a Syriac-Catholic monk who lived amongst the Yazidis for 15 years and gained an intimate familiarity with their beliefs and practices. And his manuscript would serve as the primary source of Western knowledge of Yazidi practices for many years as translations slowly started to spread in the last years of the 19th century with an Italian translation by Samuel Giamil appearing in 1900.
While Ishak’s manuscript was complete prior to Giovanni’s murder, it was seemingly in no language for him to use it and there are no accounts of the manuscript being available in Italy prior to his leaving for America. So where was he getting this information on his practices? The ecstatic dancing. The making and swallowing of pills. The seven holy roosters. These were not covered in the Black Book and aren’t really covered in On the Yezidis either but what Giovanni was practicing does have roots in Yazidi culture and is something hitherto unknown. Are these actual beliefs and practices adhered to by Yazidis from the time? Do they offer legitimate insight into their culture?
It all hints at the larger mystery here of how did he get this information. There must have been wider spread of knowledge of Yazidi practice than is currently known. Because of Giovanni’s Italian heritage most likely meant there was more distribution of knowledge from Catholic missionaries possibly returning to the Vatican or travelers, in general, returning from trips throughout the Middle East.
Also, there is a misbegotten aspect to Giovanni’s becoming a practicing Yazidi. It just isn’t the done thing. No more so than if I just proclaimed myself a member of the Navajo and invited my friends and coworkers over to watch me perform their sacred cultural practices. Like it seemed for Giovanni, it would be awkward and more than a little cringey. You cannot just decide to become a Yazidi.
Did this get Giovanni killed? Now this is something we will maybe never know. It certainly would have made him a larger target. But the open knowledge among Providence’s Italian population that he carried around large amounts of cash would have made him an even more of a target. And the combination of the two made it irresistible to some unsavory characters.
There’s hope though for Giovanni no matter how misplaced his conversion might have been. Ishak of Bartella relates the Yazidi belief in what happens after death,
And after they are purified of their sins for a period through punishment, they are born again into mankind anew, and are placed secretly on the earth. And whether the period is one hundred or two hundred years, they are born into a human body. They go and seek out to be placed where they will live. And this is the truth of those who have that which is of the foundation of faith, and not that which the Christians and those who do not believe would attest. And those people who are found among our nation presently, clean of spirit, and theirs are found now in the air and know of what has happened previously and of that which is being prepared.
So maybe nearing 130 years now after his death Giovanni walks on Earth again. Purified.
I would like to extend my biggest heartfelt thanks to Drs. Khanna Usoyan (Omarkhali) and Philip Kreyenbroek for taking the time to review Giovanni’s case and his practices and providing invaluable context for them and insight into Yazidi culture. And a HUGE thanks to Dr. Michael Sims who was incredibly gracious to share his expertise on the Yazidis, Ishak of Bartella, as well as, his article, “Claiming the Ezidis (Yezidis): Nineteenth- and twentieth-century Assyrian, Kurdish and Arab sources on Ezidi religious and ethnic identity,” and his English translation of Ishak of Bartella’s On the Yazidis, which I quoted from at the end with his permission.
The information about Giovanni’s life and death comes from the Providence News’s surprisingly good, unsensationalized, and thorough coverage of his murder.