A brief history of Castel di Fiori
By Lynne Chatterton
“...There are in history things that cannot be wiped out.....Empires may fall, political institutions wither away, but the traces of human occupation and labour of generations upon generations of men (and women) on the land, remain to flower again when a propitious season returns.“ (Giulano Procacci)
(History of the Italian People, p. 10, Penguin Books, London, 1991)
The following in an extract from "Red Herrings" by Lynne Chatterton, Pulcini Press
September 2000, Castel di Fiori.
This year we’ve been living in Castel di Fiori for ten years. I feel it is a significant milestone in our lives as expatriates. We haven’t been back to Australia during those ten years and so our life there is firmly in the past and our life in Castel di Fiori is now the present and future. We have not lost our Australian identity and we remain proud of it, but we are now also joined to the history of Castel di Fiori - we have become part of it ourselves.
Just how much this is so is brought home to me when I am appointed to a small committee formed to write a history of Castel di Fiori. Initially we decide to write a small brochure to hand out to visitors when they come to look at the stars from our newly restored tower, and later I am to produce a book that will contain all that it is possible for us to find out about the roots of the village in which we live.
It doesn’t take long for me to find out that all historical record is a chimera - apparent certainties are weakened and diluted as one document contradicts the other. The partisan passion that comes to the fore when one or other of our group is convinced of the truth of their particular piece of research as against the truth of another is a surprise to me.
The tower of Castel di Fiori
Take the castle. One version, not at all beyond the bounds of possibility and well researched by a respected archivist, is that a banditto - one of those who swarmed in and around Umbria after the Roman Empire dissolved - built both the tower and a fortified castle and called it Castel Brandetto in the early 12th century and it remained so until the Longobard family of Bulgarelli captured the territory and set up their dynasty. This dynasty flourished and created a nobility for itself, one of whom was the Count of Marsciano. He spawned the first Count of Montegiove and this Count’s territory included Castel Brandetto.
The Bulgarelli must have changed the name (if indeed the Castle was known as Brandetto), because in 1290 A.D. the castle was recorded in the census of Pope Boniface the Third as “Castro Florae” and in 1345 A.D. by edict of Orvieto it was renamed Castrum Florae. However, this edict said that it was to change the name, not of Castro Florae but of Castel di Acqualta to Castrum Florae.
From about 1100 A.D. there had been an abbey in existence at the bottom of the hill below the castle and this was called the Abbey of Acqualta. Did the edict refer to “the castle near the Abbey of Acqualta?”
One can imagine the Pope (who resided much of the time in Orvieto) saying to the scribe - “just change the name of that little castle near the Abbey Acqualta to Castrum Florae so that it tidies up the records will you?” And it was done. The fact that Castel Brandetto or Castrum Florae whatever it was called stood on the boundary between the territories of Orvieto and Perugia and formed an important part of the defences of Orvieto against the aggressive Perugians may well have been the motive for the Pope to want to have it firmly on his list off “castles on whom we can rely”.
Arch through the original wall around the village. There were doors that were closed at night.
The fourteenth century was hell for Castel di Fiori. It was battered, partially dismantled, rebuilt and battered again. At one stage, the Count of Marsciano fell out with the powerful of Orvieto over some land transaction and put his family’s territories (including Castel di Fiori) under the protection of the Perugians. Naturally Orvieto hit back and for forty years they fought battles with Perugia to regain this strategically important fortress.
A later Count of Marsciano had to hand over most of his territory to the Church in the latter part of the 16th century when this part of Umbria became part of the Papal Estates, but for some mysterious reason he was allowed to keep Castel di Fiori. Perhaps by that time it just wasn’t important enough. By then, the Abbey had been quietly abandoned and the border wars had resolved themselves.
Castel di Fiori had become just another one of those tiny parishes that were required to contribute to the Papal majesty that in our part of the world was based in Orvieto. In 1500 A.D. the residents of Castel di Fiori (about 500 in number) were required to provide 4 lb. of candle wax to the Church of Sant’Andrea in Orvieto, and in 1520 A.D. Castel di Fiori was told it had to stump up an extra levy of 0.5% on its taxes to help pay for the Pozzo di S. Patrizio that was being built in Orvieto to “alleviate the suffering from lack of water of the inhabitants”. The Pozzo is one of the tourist attractions of Orvieto today - you can climb up and down its two hundred or so steps and marvel at the engineering skills that created it.
There is enough looseness in this account of the castle’s origin to encourage one of our group to feel passionately about proving that the castle was never called Castel Brandetto and that we must not put that name in our publication. To support her case, she has found a local historian who says there was a Castel Brandetto not here but in the nearby town of Monteleone - and what’s more there are ruins to prove it. But does this invalidate our Castle Brandetto? Perhaps our original banditti retreated there when the Bulgarelli kicked them out of our castle and they built another. Or perhaps they had two anyway and no one had any reason to rename the Monteleone fortress?
The only fact we can be sure about is that local use has shaped the name of our village to Castel di Fiori - and the unusual conjunction of ‘di’ rather than “dei” with Fiori causes comment and is often “corrected” by pedants who want to show off their Italian. Most of us settle for the comforting myth that at some stage the castle was owned by the family “Di Fiori” and that it is not a reference to a Castle of Flowers. This proposition put to the casually enquiring visitor by local residents usually puts an end to the matter. My eyes light up when reading Harold Acton’s “The Bourbons” I discover that he mentions a Count di Fiori of a “prominent Italian family” who appeared briefly at the Bourbon court in Naples. The Count is of so little importance to the story that he is not listed in the index. So much for that.
Then there is the question of the Romans. Were they here or not? Myth has it that the large stones that indicate an old road at the top of the hill behind our house (the Pericchio) were part of a Roman road that ran from Arezzo to Rome. It may have been used during the Roman retreat from the battle with Hannibal at nearby Lake Trasimeno. Great discussions occur about the battle tactics, and the logic of the theory. Others say that the road was paved by local people because they used it to take the grain by that route from Castel di Fiori to the mill at Montegiove. But, say some, there is no doubt that a Roman garrison was housed in the Castle during the battles with the Bulgarelli - some Roman artefacts were found when apartments within the walls were being restored. These apartments are now inhabited by the families of earlier contadini (sharefarmers) and by modern day Romans who come up for the summer. Only a few weeks ago, an ancient Latin inscription was found above a fireplace in a house in the village being lavishly restored by retired Americans. Is this not proof? Perhaps, perhaps not. Future historians will be able to say for certain that Romans inhabited Castel di Fiori - but these came in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Passions run high about this too.
All this research and discussion animates local memory and the past becomes a general topic for conversation. Yesterday four of the younger women from the village came up to visit. They are bright, happy, dressed in summer cottons, and they make me think of a small flock of pretty birds. Three of them were born in our house when their fathers and mothers lived and worked here under the system of mezzadria that for centuries bonded farm workers to the land of the nobility.
When they were born there was no water here - it had to be carted up from the spring at the bottom of the hill, there was no electricity until they were almost of school age and then only a connection not a household supply. Their families had no cars, no radio, grew most of their own food, worked so very hard. Franca is delighted to see our top field again because she remembers how they used to bring the trebbiatura (threshing machine) up from the village and thresh the grain here in summer. It was the highlight of the summer. “We would have 70 or more at the table when they finished. It was such fun,” she said. Next Sunday we will have a recreation of that event when Enzo will polish up the old machine and the villagers will re-enact the roles of padrone, carabinieri, fattore and workmen as a sort of pantomime and afterwards we will have a little feast to celebrate times past.
The girls remember fondly when the first television set came to Castel di Fiori. It was set up in one of the houses in the village and everyone came to watch it - the canny owner demanding a small payment for the privilege. The house was later abandoned, fell into ruin, and is today being restored - it is known locally as the “Casa di Televisione”.
Panino and Anselma (who were married in our house) - came up several days ago with some tomatoes and beans - a sharing out of their summer produce that takes the form of a ceremonial visit during which they inspect our newest garden planting or building project and tell us again about life here before and during World War Two. Anselma, who is the aunt of our most recent visitors Franca, Fausta and Rosanna, tells me how she and her brothers and sisters, father and mother huddled in the ditch behind the house as bombs rained down during the bombardment of Montegabbione when the British finally drove the Germans out. Panino tells of how they used to take contraband tobacco leaves down to Fabro and sell them to the soldiers during the war so that they could get cash to buy necessities such as salt and sugar. And they both tell us of the hard, hard work that filled their days. Until the 1950’s there were no domestic appliances, everything had to be made by hand, their diet was simple but demanded from the women hours of kneading, cooking, preserving, picking and sorting. Men and women and children worked in the field but the men did the really heavy work - the planting, the ploughing, the woodcutting, the harvesting and the endless carting of water to the house and grain and olives to and from the mills.
It is constantly astonishing to me to realise that in the last thirty years life in our part of the world has changed so dramatically.
Today Rosanna, Fausta, Franca and Rita are educated, modern women. They drive cars, have professional qualifications and continue to work outside the home even when they have children. Abortion and divorce are legal, but one hopes they will never have to take advantage of them. Their daughters will take fiancées and go on holidays with them for years before they are actually married. When they themselves become grandmothers they will remain youthful, beautifully dressed and made up. Their children are educated and expect to go to university and live comfortable lives with an apartment in the town or city and a house in the country. They look back on their early lives not with bitterness or sadness at the poverty and grind of daily work, but with fondness and a clear sense of the joys and goodness of the human companionship and simple pleasures that were part of it all. To my mind they continue to live out the human virtues that poverty and isolation in rural Umbria nurtured in their families while at the same time enjoying the benefits of a modern and financially comfortable present.
Yet memories alone can get the historian into trouble. The Church of S. Antonio that adjoins our cemetery is a case in point. It is supposed to have been the private church of the Bulgarelli counts and several of them were buried in its cemetery. I first found a reference to it when I read of Count Bernadino who in 1139 A.D. usurped his children’s inheritance which included Castel di Fiori or Castrum Florae as it was probably known then. The Abbott Marcese from our Abbey of Acqualta and Judge Dono of Piegaro persuaded him to confess, restore the territory and property to the rightful heirs and, just to make the point fined him twenty lire. It was all very public and it must have been quite a drama. The confession is supposed to have taken place in the Church of S. Antonio. The church is in ruins today and the historian is naturally interested in just when the church fell into the ruin and why was it allowed to do so. Some of the old people told me that they remembered being taken to S. Antonio for masses and communions with their parents. Working back from their present ages, the church must have been used until at least 1920. Yet, one of my co-researchers found church archives that said that S. Antonio was deconsecrated in 1802 A.D. after the Marsciano nobility left Castel di Fiori to live elsewhere.
The parish church, Santa Maria Madelena, that is within the walls of the borgo, seemed to be serving the local inhabitants quite well and had from some time in the 16th century. The new padrone, the Marocchi, created their own private chapel in the big palazzo which faced the village piazza. Apparently no one cared to keep up the larger church.
The north door of Santa Maria Madelena. I suspect it was taken from the abbey near the fontain of S. Pietro di Aqualta below Castel di Fiori.
A copy of the original plaque at the entrance to Castel di Fiori.
But does this mean that the oral history is not reliable? I went back to check with my original sources. They all insisted that their memories were sound. Who is right? The cemetery which adjoins the ruins of S. Antonio was practically abandoned when we came here ten years ago - only a few rusted iron crosses here and there to mark ancient graves. Now there is a wall of fornetti (already full) and the little chapels containing sepulchres of more recent padrone and their families have been cleaned up and are being used again. Electricity and water have been laid on and one would never believe that there was a pause in the funerals.
S. Antonio remains a ruin, the stones of its central altar the only sign that it must once have been quite lovely.
S. Antonio as it is today.
As time goes on, I am deluged with help in my research. My own library of Italian and Umbrian history is amplified by gifts of out of print books of local history, manuscripts of memoirs, introductions to archivists and librarians that result in riches galore. I am allowed to see medieval manuscripts, have copies made of relevant books that I cannot find in bookshops, make notes and am offered translations of obscure Latin texts and documents. My fellow cultural commissars carry out great feats of research ranging from the Vatican archives to esoteric parochial records and documents.
I had imagined that Castel di Fiori, because of its isolation and difficult terrain, had remained untouched by the turbulent history of Umbria in the last 2,000 years. The battle of Trasimeno when the Tunisian Hannibal had decimated the Roman army had taken place only about 60 Km. from here, but could have been planets away for all that it touched our remote and tiny settlement. Garibaldi passed in this general direction but seems to have gotten no nearer than the village of Ficulle (over the hills and no easy passage from here) where he rested under an olive tree during his march from Rome and over to the Marches via Chiusi. How wrong I was.
Our tower for almost a thousand years stood guardian over the battles and victories, the occupation and liberation of Castel di Fiori. It was sadly damaged during the wars of the 14th century but in 1385 A.D. Pope Boniface ordered it to be restored. Once the need for a lookout for marauding enemies no longer existed, it was left to moulder and gently declined into a romantic ruin. Comune funds were spent on it in 1930 A.D. when it was feared that it would fall down if not buttressed a little, but it deteriorated even more and eventually became just a pile of stones - neglected and tatty. In this 21st century it has now undergone a transformation. It has been fully restored and even improved, thanks to funds from the European Union, and although there have been grumbles and conflicts about who should have consulted who, and who should have a key, the inauguration of the finished building is on the whole happy and joyful.
On the evening of the inauguration the Mayor makes a short speech to observe the ceremonial decencies and then we troop in to inspect the new four level staircase, and the more daring climb onto the roof to enjoy the view. A modest display of photographs of the “old days” is on show for us all to smile and wonder at. Several nights later the birthday of one of our residents is celebrated. We all gather in the piazza, eat an ample meal, and then walk to the tower that, lit by electric lamps, now makes a focal point for our village. The birthday cake is ablaze with the seventy candles that Findano is now entitled to - but, look, what has swooped down from the tower - a white banner floats in the air, on it a message written in red - “Findano for Mayor”. His family, and we his friends, applaud and laugh in support and he blushes and grins. “A bit late for that,” he says.
Our little brochure is handed out - everyone seems to be reading it - and no doubt each goes home to the privacy of their own kitchen and says “But, I remember when.... and it was different”. History.