Invented mythical lineages legitimate the mafia’s protective role to recruits

Evidence

Mythical characters have also been enlisted to promote the cause of the mafia. I Beati Paoli, an eighteenth-century sect of avengers, and Coriolano della Foresta, a Sicilian Robin Hood, are both mentioned in Leonardo Vitale’s revelations. Vitale complains that he was tricked into joining the mafia by claims that it fights thieves and helps the weak, in the tradition of I Beati Paoli and Coriolano della Foresta (OSPA Stajano: 14); furthermore, he was told, the wording of the oath in the ritual derives from the “sacred rite of the Beati Paoli” (ibid. p. 7). (A sign that these characters are part of the mafia’s internal mythology is that “Coriolano della Foresta” was Salvatore Contorno’s nickname.) There is no evidence of a historical incarnation of I Beati Paoli. Francesco Renda ( 1988) in a study of all extant documents concerning the sect, remains noncommittal and prudently concentrates only on the idea of the group. — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 339

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels the reader’s framework: brand-building through invented tradition, echoing the trademark/brand chapter theme and Hobsbawm’s ‘invented traditions’ concept on legitimating private power.
• FICTION: The Beati Paoli concept — an eighteenth-century avenger sect with no verifiable historical existence yet used to justify an oath ritual — is a ready-made worldbuilding seed for a secret society’s invented origin myth.