Leonardo Sarducci was Fascist Italy's minister of the archaic and a leader of the movement's crusade against intellectuals.
Biography[]
Early life[]
Born to a poor family in Frascati, Italy, Leonardo Sarducci studied at the Sorbonne and received his doctorate from the University of Rome. He taught in Rome until the outbreak of World War I, when he enlisted as a captain and suffered a head wound during battle. The injury, coupled with the loss of his wife Mona Grimaldi, who died during childbirth while Sarducci was fighting abroad, led to a psychotic breakdown.[1]
After brutally maiming the doctor he blamed for his wife's death, Sarducci was judged criminally insane and imprisoned from 1918 to 1921. While incarcerated, he authored what would become a best-selling manifesto, denouncing science and reason and promoting as substitute a belief system based on the archaic. The book caught the attention of Benito Mussolini, who pardoned Sarducci and made him his minister of the archaic in 1927.[1]
Encounters with Indiana Jones[]
Spurred by his fascination with the occult, Sarducci pursued the American archaeologist Indiana Jones in 1933 to the lost city of Cozán in British Honduras, where he stole the Crystal Skull from the American adventurer.[1]
Next, he turned his attention to the Voynich Manuscript, convinced that the ancient text contained the key to discovering the legendary Philosopher's Stone. He stole the manuscript and enlisted the help of British alchemist Alistair Dunstin. The pair determined that an unusual tattoo adorning the back of Alistair's sister, Alecia, contained a map to the Tomb of Hermes, the resting place of the Philosopher's Stone. Together, Sarducci and Dunstin lured Alecia and her traveling companion, Indiana Jones, to Libya, where Alistair used the tattoo to pinpoint the location of the Tomb. Ecstatic, Sarducci held the Philosopher's Stone in his bare hands, learning too late that his flesh could not withstand the power of the mystical object.[1]
Legacy[]
After Sarducci's death, when the Honduran government issued a warrant of arrest against Indiana Jones for accusations of being a grave robber, the media noted that Jones was also wanted in connection with the disappearance of Sarducci and an Italian tourist associated with him.[2] Ultimately, the whole incident would cause Jones to be accused of being a grave robber rather than a scientist in Honduras, with stories of the misunderstanding reaching to others, like Prime Minister Chattar Lal of the Pankot Province, by 1935.[3]