Joseph Fuos

According to the scholar Francesco Alziator, travel literature on Sardinia begins with the German Joseph Fuos. It is in fact with this chaplain that the view of the island takes on another perspective: previously the subject of cold reports and memorials written for the Piedmontese government, Sardinia is now under the critical and interested eye of travelers who look with interest at local customs, customs and the most varied aspects of society.
Fuos was founded in 1739 in Krumschiltach, near Baden. There is little information about his life: a Lutheran, he followed his theological studies and in 1760 he was appointed chaplain of the infantry regiment in Stuttgart, then choosing to continue his ecclesiastical career until he became bishop in the city of Ebersbach, where he died in 1805. His stay on the island dates back to the years 1773-77, when he put together his observations and considerations, then collected in the thirteen letters of which “Nachrichten aus Sardinien” is composed. The work was published in Germany since 1780 but appeared in our country only a century later when it was translated by a lawyer, Pasquale Gastaldi Millelire.
Fuos discovers the contrast between a beautiful territory and its inexhaustible wealth and its difficult social and economic conditions, at a time when the transition to the House of Savoy (1718) had not yet remedied the heavy legacy of a decaying Spain. The German traveler cannot help but notice the living conditions of the people, the state of the streets infested by bandits and the enormous distances that kept the villages of farmers and shepherds away, an emblem of a depopulation cause and effect of poverty. In his heated pages of heated controversy both against the incapacity of the Piedmontese and against the laziness of the Sardinians, he offers a useful cross-section for the reconstruction of Sardinian society in the second half of the 18th century.
The letters range from topics to the political system of the country (III and IV) to the conditions of culture and commerce (XI and XII). As a good clergyman, he then dedicates the entire central body of letters (from V to X) to the problems of the Church, but his attention focuses especially on the account of the island's religious events (the festival of Sant'Efisio, the Easter rites) that represent the testimony of ancient traditions.

Update

25/6/2026 - 13:26