An Italian Brigand.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 176, 30 October 1886, Page 1 (Supplement)

An Italian Brigand.

The capture of a brigand near Bocchigliere, a hamlet Bituated in a remote part of the Calabrian highlands, has revealed the existence in that region of an extensive sect remarkable alike for the wildness of its tenets and the nefarious character of its practices. Its head is an ex-eergeant GabrielV Donnici, who claims to be the Deity, and represents the advent as still to come. During the last five years he has been organising this sect, which comprises nearly all the small farmers and shepherds of the- district. His gospel eeema to be a sort of communism of the lowest and most eeneual type. The clandestine meetings of the sect are alleged to be marked by orgies and obscene rites, recalling the worst scenes of Oriental paganism. Donnici's own sister-in-law, for refusing to conform to these practices, was shut up in a cave and left there to die. This nearly led to the breaking up of the community, as Donnici . and his followers were " arrested and tried for murder, but owing to the impossibility of procuring witnesses against them they were acquitted. The sect has now been brought into fuller notice by the capture of Serafino Bruno, one of its- leading members, or saints, as they are styled. This worthy, after murdering a doctor, 'betook himself last April to the woods, and with' the connivance of his co-rell-gionists flourished there as a highway robber. , The police ha\e failed to track him. Bruno was arrested the other day by a local landowner, Count Conversano. His capture occasioned great demonstrations of grief at Bocchigliere, where hundreds of men and women hung about this precious saint and kissed him rapturously. It is to be hoped the police authorities will be more r (successful in bringing ,h' me their guilt to the ringleaders of this extraordinary association, r '