To talk, even briefly, about the origins
of the Cane Corso inevitably means binding cynological notions, learned
perhaps because of a passion for the subject, to sensations and emotions that
sometimes are inevitable and surge up from the unconscious and other times
manageable and justifiable even to those who are not so passionate. This knot of
emotions should not be untied, especially in the delicate phase of the
recuperation of a breed.
As one follows the path of time, centuries
unfold in turn, memory blurs, and writing becomes generic and repetitive. In the
Corso survives the ancestral dog, the protector-spirit "so that the
world exists", as Zarathushtra ardently declared twenty-seven centuries ago
(Iran, 7th century BC). In its stern gaze the archetypes oscillate,
from Tibet to the Assyro-Babylonians.
Its roots include the Canis pugnax,
of which Lucius Giunius Moderatus Culmella (AD 1st to 2nd
century), who emigrated to Rome from a defeated Macedonia in AD 168, speaks to
us in his De re rustica; he equally praises a number of parallel noble
branches, including the pugnaces Britanniae, which had been brought by
the ships of the intrepid Phoenicians from Tyre and Sidon to distant England.
Things probably did not really come about
in this way, nor so simply. There is a need, with a little discernment, to
familiarize oneself with the research done by naturalists. This research leads
us, across Macedonia, undoubtedly, towards Mesopotamia, Pamir, Karakorum, and
the vales of the Indus. There are reasons to ask oneself whether the molossoid
dog comes so decisively from the Orient or whether, instead, the theories put
forth by Buffon, Megnin and others, which rest both on the rather weak and
certainly puffed up foundation of writers (from Aristotle to Herodotus and
Pliny) and on the more dependable images found on plaques, bas-reliefs, statues
and tablets, orient the evidence with excessive rigidity towards the east.
What certainly comes out of all this is
that, in so much as it is copiously and in its particulars documented, in the
proto-history of the Cane Corso, a more agile and sleeker molosser has
always been distinguished from a heavier and more massive molosser. An overview
of the essential iconography will be sufficient to give us a clearer idea.
The head of the colossal molosser in the
bas-relief uncovered from excavations made in the vicinity of the biblical
Nineveh (850 BC) and conserved at the British Museum in London reaches the chest
of the guard leading him on a leash; its musculature seems almost abnormal and
the jowls fold in waves over the collar. But other Assyrian bas-reliefs (7th
century BC) conserved in the same London museum depict some molossoids barely
held in check by their guards and others unleashed in pursuit of wild asses;
they are leaner and higher-limbed, with a powerful, oval-sectioned neck, no
jowls or any sign of them, a lightly arched stomach, and ribs made easily
discernable by the effort of the chase and the capture. Bartolomeo Pinelli
(1781-1835), the picturesque engraver who depicted Rome and the surrounding
countryside, "signed" his engravings by filling them with mastiffs. If
the model for the dog with the brigands seems to coincide with the modern
Neapolitan mastiff (stomach and back parallel, pronounced jowls), the figures of
the dogs who sink their teeth into bulls and Christians and who leap at one
another’s throats correspond more readily to the Cane
Corso.
The engraver, in fact, denotes their nervy
dynamism with lines of power and agility; the heads are massive and the muzzles
a little long; flesh adheres to them without wrinkles. The stomach is lightly
portrayed, and the trunk is furrowed by the chiaroscuro of the carved, marbled
musculature.
Much of the iconography offered by
passionate admirers of the Neapolitan mastiff undoubtedly depicts a lighter and
leaner molossoid. Limiting oneself to the examples found in the Mario Zacchi’s
beautiful book (Il molosso italiano, 1983), the particulars of the Roman
sarcophagi of the second century AD (p. 19), the extraordinary Achemenide statue
from Persepolis (Fifth century BC, p. 3), the ancient Sumerian tablet of the
second millennium BC (p. 16), resemble the Cani Corsi more than the
Neapolitan mastiff. Even if, in the end, we had to make a complete list, with
the aid of Michel Villemont’s encyclopedic investigation (Il grande libro
del cane - The Big Book of Dogs, Novara 1971), Buffon’s illustrations (the
illustration titled Le dogue in his Histore Naturelle is an almost
perfect Cane Corso!), other naturalists, and the enormous quantity of
iconographic material (bas-reliefs, miniatures, ceramics, Nativity scenes,
engravings . . .) the examples of the enormous molosser we saw in the Nineveh
bas-relief could be counted, we believe, on one hand.
This said, we have entered the mine field
of an old argument that divides cynophiles into armed camps, one opposed to the
other. Explicit echoes can be found, for example, in the above-cited work of
Mario Zacchi, when, in comparison with the more voluminous mass (and, hence,
"classicisty") of the Neapolitan mastiff, lighter weight molossoids
are covered with pejorative titles ("underbred"). In any case, we
intend to leave behind this fickle terrain immediately, without the shadow of an
argument. Maintaining a breed of enormous displacement, or, likewise, but to a
lesser extent, one of considerable displacement, is always a difficult and
precious accomplishment. Oppiano of Syria (3rd century AD) attests to
this when he recommends protecting, during inter-breeding, the most imposingly
massive strains.
We should remind ourselves of the common
tendency that writers have of deforming the truth, seconding the inclinations of
passionate devotees and transported by the wings of enthusiasm. How else can we
explain the two dogs of extraordinary size ( "inusitatae magnitudinis"
) given to Alexander the Great by the king Paurava, as Pliny the Elder (23-79
AD) tells us in his Naturalis historia? One of these two was able,
according to Pliny, to take down a lion and wear out an elephant! And yet
Strabone, a Greek transplanted to Rome around 45 BC, gives a more proportional
figure when he declares that it takes four molossers to stand up to one lion.
Marco Polo (1254-1324), in his Milione (Million), mentions the presence
of "mastiffs as large as donkeys" in Tibet. And yet, what follows is
also valid, giving a sense of agility, speed, and endurance: these enormous dogs
"are good for capturing wild beasts."
Written evidence can be like a close-up
photograph, without relation or possibility of comparison, or it can be like a
picture taken with a deformed and deforming perspective. In any case, it is good
have a fixed idea of the dog’s functions, which alone can allow us to imagine
its proportions, and it is wise to avoid the irresolvable question of
primogeniture, which risks becoming similar to the well known argument about the
chicken and the egg.
In ancient Rome, the procuratores
cinogiae gathered together dogs from the far corners of the empire and
brought them to the Urbe. They divided the dogs into celeres
(those that ran down wild animals), pungaces (those that attacked wild
animals), and villatici, (those that guarded farms). These are broad,
and, we would say today, rough typologies, to which we can more or less the
modern hound, the corso, and the Neapolitan mastiff.
The tinuci are the oriental variant
of the Roman procuratores, as Marco Polo reports. It was through their
work that over five thousand dogs could take part in each of the sovereign’s
splendid bear and wild boar hunts.
And we should be satisfied by considering
the antique images and the ancient written references that, in general, testify
to the millennial existence of the molossoid in the acts of chasing and
guarding, of hunting and seizing. Without making improbable deductions about
canine roots, we should limit ourselves to saying that this is also where the Cane
Corso has its origins, perceptibly and meaningfully paralleling the
development of human civilization and the Indo-European origin of our language.
The specific route taken by the breed to reach us is another question, and
perhaps irresolvable. The alternatives delineate archaic trajectories, that from
Tibet move towards China, India, and finally Europe; these more or less ancient
migrations and movements involved the Assyrians, Phoenicians, Empyreans, Romans,
and barbarians. These movements would have been more or less direct if, as we
have seen, the Cane Corso followed the same lines, from east to west, as
the Greco-Roman matrix of its name. The roads are more twisted if, on the other
hand, the name’s origin is Celtic, and more recent if corso is of
Provençal origin, alluding to the well noted presence of the Angevins in
southern Italy between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries.
This are more or less well founded
hypotheses which do not damage the noble heredity that runs in the blood of the Cane
Corso and that accompanies it from the vast horizon of prehistory through
its already multi-centennial history as it guards palaces, convents, and farms,
as it watches over livestock and travelers, and as it hunts down wild boars and
joins in fierce struggles with bears and wolves. Time quickly moves to the
present.
Imagine Capitanata at the end of the last
century, the lands of Puglia, Sannio, Lucania, Calabria, and Sicily. Imagine the
herds and flocks, out in the pasture and in the folds. Imagine all of the
collateral activities that accompanied the sacred rhythms of the hard and slow
life of the Italian countryside: carts, carters, and butchers, as well as tax
collectors and brigands…
The Cane Corso has been here for
centuries, protecting us from predators and thieves. But it lives in a
fragmented territory, harsh and closed, separated by regional boundaries and
geographic limits, kept apart by natural obstacles down to the smallest fold or
rock outcropping. When speaking of the Cane Corso, one should speak of
"islands of conservation", in the morphological and functional senses.
The uses of the Cane Corso, in any case, will be treated in another part
of this book.