Donkeys used to be everywhere in Italy. Big black ones roamed Italy's heel. There were white ones on the little island of Asinara and gray ones with brown rings on their legs and a brown cross on their backs in Tuscany, where the princess lived. On Sardinia, they grew to be just two feet tall.
At death, medieval peasants were buried with their deceased donkeys, in a nod to the beasts' value. St. Francis, the patron saint of Italy -- and animals -- rode one. Priests blessed them. Renaissance painters put them in their frescoes.
Then came the combustion engine. Carts and plows were replaced by trucks and tractors. Donkeys were sold for meat. The princess missed them.
So she and like-minded Italians are now trying to revive the donkey through methods used to preserve many things to which Italians are attached: identifying a niche market, creating a tourist attraction and, above all, going to the government and European Union for money.
Donkeys, a symbol of Italy's impoverished past, might not seem as important as, say, Venice or family farming, both under threat -- unless you see something profoundly Italian in them, as Princess Nicoletta d'Ardia Caracciolo does.
"Italy isn't Italy without donkeys," she said, gazing lovingly at the herd of 17 she keeps on land near Magliano, a hilltop town in far western Tuscany. "Italy without donkeys is like Italy without churches."
In Sardinia, where the donkey population shrank from about 20,000 in the 1940s to a few score by 2000, researchers are keeping breeds of both the Sardinian ass and the Asinara donkey in a national park on Asinara island, once the site of an Alcatraz-style prison.
In late May, the Tuscan town of Grosseto hosted National Donkey Day to show off the local Miccio Amiatino, the breed raised by Princess Caracciolo, as well as other stock from all over Italy. The town became a virtual time machine, filled with carts and little boys leading braying animals on rope halters.
Donkey owners hawked donkey milk, which they touted as a substitute dairy product for people allergic to cow's milk. Ugo Corrieri, who heads the psychiatric department at Grosseto hospital, explained the possibilities of "onotherapy," the use of donkeys to improve the motor skills of disabled children and help children and teenagers who have difficulty relating to their surroundings. imilar programs employ horses for the same purpose.
Maria Patrizia Latini, who keeps five donkeys for the use of both tourists and disabled children, said she was trying to persuade investors to explore the legendary cosmetic properties of ass's milk. The historical testimony is convincing: Cleopatra, Nero's wife Poppea and the Austrian Empress Sissi all soaked in baths of donkey milk.
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