Monday, January 11, 2016

Monteserico historic events in brief

WELCOME TO FRANK MENCHISE BLOG OF GENZANO DI LUCANIA, YOU ARE INVITED TO BROWSE AS LONG AS YOU LIKE.
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Welcome to our blog, Genzano it story
and this post, monteserico historic events in brief
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This is another photo of the castle of Monteserico, it shows the castle walls very clearly how they were built with stones, if you know about building you would understand what we want to convey here; you see, in those old times they built very different from today.










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This is the Norman's leader, Robert Guiscard 1015-1085 he ruled over Monteserico castle, Count of Apulia and Calabria (1057- 1059 and then Duke of Apulia, Calabria and Sicily 1059- 1085 AD.










Historic events in brief
Dear readers, this post is also the continuation of the history of the castle of Monteserico, you see, in this post we are still talking about the castle, so, we are continuing to look at the history around this castle. Anyhow, the history during the first millennium of this castle is not know very much, but it is believed that there were some caves that the shepherds and other inhabitant of this region used for themselves, before the castle of Monteserico was built. Some people say that this part of Southern Italy has seen many battles; they even suggest that Spartacus with his other slave friend have been here, while they were in Southern Italy, as history tells us when the slaves rebelled and formed their own army under their leader Spartacus, they went to live near the Ionian Sea, now Monteserico is part of the territories that runs into the Ionian Sea through the river Bradano and its tributaries, there might be also another story why Spartacus could have come this way; you see in Genzano town even today there is this chasm called the Greek chasm, the only thing that this can mean is that there was a Greek colony living in this chasm; and Spartacus being Greek for sure would be attracted from this countrymen community, so even Spartacus could have come in Monteserico and in Genzano territory.
Now let us go back to talk about our castle of Monteserico and let us imagine how this castle came into being a castle; as we all know everything most time starts small and then starts growing, so, some people say that at the beginning, this could have been a Roman villa used to run the countryside and for holiday, then turned as a monastery of the Greek orthodox religion. Then as the time went by and many wars and other things happened around this place it kept growing until we find that the Normans at the beginning of the second millennium have this castle, and they rule over most of southern Italy from this castle of Monteserico; well at least this is how this castle history looks like.
After the Normans the castle of Monteserico changed many owners, and some of which we are going to mention as soon as we get around; one of the most known historic people was the Swedish duke of southern Italy Frederic 2nd, but the most known historic person known from the inhabitant of Genzano is Aquilina Sancia queen of Monteserico. The reason for this is that while this Aquilina Sancia was there she built a monastery of the Clarisse in Genzano and this monastery attracted people that lived around to move and live around this monastery and for this reason Genzano town is said that Aquilina Sancia is the founder of the existing Genzano, today we know that this is not correct, since there is some historic evidence that the town of Genzano has existed since the Roman times. 
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More historic events
Here we are saying that we are going to look at some historic event that would help establish the history of this castle, today it is hard to do that because there isn’t any history written properly about this Monteserico castle, so we are going to rely on search done about sixty years ago from the writer Ettore Lorito who has done some search and written a book about Genzano including the castle of Monteserico:
The writer Ettore Lorito suggests that the beginning of the castle is ancient, but nobody really knows when it was started; anyhow we would like to tell you what he has written in this very shortened and translated version, since here we are writing this article about this castle; we are doing this since the original is written in Italian. Now if there are some people that would like to read the original Italian version they should go to this link;  http://genzanoit.blogspot.com/, this is one of my blogs, so I am going to explain how to navigate to this link, first of all click on the link above, once you have reached the blog, you need to navigate down the left side column until you reach Home pages, in Home pages find the link, Genzano in Italiano, (it 1) and click on it, go down the page and then click on the link, Scrittori e poeti, a few names of writers come up, click on Ettore Lorito, some links for two books come up, click on GENZANO DI BASILICATA Cronografia; within this book there is also the story of the castle of Monteserico.
Now that I have explained how to find the Italian original version, let me start to tell this shortened version in English.
It is thought that very early at the place where the castle is today there were caves below it that the local people used to live in; today it might seem strange to think that people lived in caves, but they did, so that was already a start for people to continue to live there. So very likely when the Romans conquered southern Italy some of them might have built a villa, this was only natural as this gave them the control of the country side, this is one of the possible ways how this castle was started. It is also believed that Spartacus and his Roman slave’s friends have been in this country and fought with the Romans, and also that even the Roman council Marcello and Hannibal have fought on this territory, but there is no mention of the castle in those times.
Some people say that the castle was built around 900 AD just because they have found some written story; one of this is the following.
The writer Deblaisiis in his Norman Conquest said that in the year 929 AD Guaimaro and Ladolfo to repay the Norman for the help they had given at Monte Serico and Monte Peloso gave them some castles including one in Spinazzola; so the castle of Monteserico was already there and perhaps it had been there as a villa at the beginning and then modified into a castle after the fall of the Roman empire, when most localities had to look after themselves, since there was not a Roman army to guard the country. Anyhow, because in 929 the castle was already there, it was not built by the Norman as some people believe.
Now just to make this story shorter, let us go to when the Norman had somehow got possession of the castle of Monteserico after many battles, you see even today after a thousand years there is a hill called (Serra della battaglia) this laterally means “the hill of the battle” But even though the Norman and their allied won that battle on this hill, they were not able to take the castle this time, because the castle was well defended; but somehow they got there some years later.
Anyhow, we know through history that Robert Guiscard a Norman by birth became duke in southern Italy, I would like to say more who has owned the castle, but for me to name other names that owned this castle is hard to know unless I find an historic list, but we can say that through marriages, exchanges and other things the castle of Monteserico was ruled from this Spanish princess Aquilina Sancia around 1300 AD.. In those times there was also a suburb near the castle, but it slowly disappeared around 1400 and 1430 AD.
I believe that this post is becoming too long and we have still a few things to say about this castle, so see you in our next post, where we are trying to work out about more history about this castle.

Friday, December 18, 2015

The Norman castle of Monteserico

WELCOME TO FRANK MENCHISE BLOG OF GENZANO DI LUCANIA, YOU ARE INVITED TO BROWSE AS LONG AS YOU LIKE.
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Welcome to our blog, Genzano it story
and this post, the Norman castle of Monteserico
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This is the Castle of Monteserico in the territory of Genzano di Lucania, as a castle size it is smallish, but its history is somehow more important that one may think possible.
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The Norman Casle of Monteserico

Dear readers, the castle that we are going to talk about in this article is a small castle, so it is not well known except for a few historic facts that have happened there, or around this castle in the past. So I have thought that in order to get a larger amount of people interested in castles and their history, we have borrowed this link of Leeds Castle, so that you could enjoy this mixed reading about castles, so anyone that likes to read this hub can view it just by clicking on the link.
But let me make this clear the post that I am writing here under in this blog, it is going to be our own small castle of Monteserico, as I have said I would like the public to be interested in the castles and the castles history and if they are they can read both articles. But be warned the castle of Monteserico is only a very small castle compared to Leeds Castle, but it has got its own history, which we are trying to write the best way we could. 
The castle of Monteserico
Welcome to our article, ‘The castle of’
We could have called this hub, The Norman castle of Monteserico, since The Normans first they fought around this castle to conquer it and then used it to run their conquest in this part of Southern Italy around 1040 AD, in second place we could have called it, ‘the castle of Federico II’, since he used this castle as sit for the “magister massarium Apuliae” while he was master of Southern Italy around 1220- 1250, but because it has many names and many owners, today we all call it the castle of Monteserico, because that is how is called the zone of southern Italy. So, let us talk about the castle of Monteserico, in Genzano di Lucania 
First of all we would like to explain to our readers the following situation: Strange as it may seem the town of Genzano di Lucania has two castles, one is in the town itself and another one is in the country, the castle that is in the town has been modified and today is used as the Town Hall (Municipio), but we are not going to talk about the castle in the town today, we have just mentioned this to explain to our readers the town of Genzano, as this involves both castles; so, today we are going to talk about the castle in the country and we call this castle, Monteserico castle; here we need to say that the name of “Monteserico” in Genzano, not only refer to this castle but it also refer to the county itself; in fact this name would cover about three quarter of Genzano territory.
Monteserico castle is a very old castle that a long time ago had a small town or village of its own, some people believe that the Normans built it, but most people don’t agree with it and have other explanations of how this castle came about before the Normans, and the Normans may have modified it and used this castle, while they were ruling over their conquest in Southern Italy, we will talk about this again as we continue with this castel story.
Now if we connect what historically is known today, we will soon see that this castle of Monteserico was there before the modern Genzano came into existence, we say the modern Genzano because there is some evidence that Genzano existed in the Roman times, as it is mentioned in the archive of Potenza that two martyrs Donato and Secondo were executed in Genzano around 258 AD, for more details see our hub Genzano di Lucania history, therefore the town of Genzano existed even then but for some reasons it is not motioned much as if it did not exist until later on as our story will show.
Now let us go back to talk about Monteserico castle, this castle is/was completely independent from the town of Genzano di Lucania, in fact the modern town of Genzano seem to have come into existence well after the Norman invasion of Southern Italy. We are saying this because even though today Monteserico Castle is situated in the territory of Genzano, the founder of the existing Genzano came from this castle, history tells us that this castle is the castle that the queen Aquilina Sancia lived in before Genzano town was built or perhaps it would be more correct to say rebuilt and Aquilina Sancia is said to be the founder of Genzano, today we know that it is not true, because there has been a very old Genzano before.
Anyhow nobody knows exactly who started to build this castle of Monteserico, and it has many stories about its origin, what we know today is that this was one of the main castles that the Normans used to rule over Southern Italy in the beginning of the second millennium, and that in this part of southern Italy there have been many wars and this castle has had many owners, another historically well-known owner was “Frederick II” about 1194-1250, check the links below. 

Frederick II. of Hohenstaufen - YouTube

Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor - Wikipedia, the free ...

 Frederick the Second, 1194-1250 - Google Books


 Some other owner of the castle we will try to mention in our text when we write our next posts. Anyhow today it happens that this castle has been restored to safe keep the heritage of this part of Southern Italy; but it is a very quiet country place, it seems almost forgotten except for the people that work around in the fields that produce some of the best durum wheat that is used to make pasta and other wheat products. However, if one is keen to know this part of Italian history one can learn something about it from these posts here and also from our hub The castle of, and then try to visit the place preferably during spring or summer.
I believe that we have said enough in this post, we hope to see you in our next post, about the castle of Monteserico, see you soon.

Sunday, December 6, 2015

Massacre in Genzano

WELCOME TO FRANK MENCHISE BLOG OF GENZANO DI LUCANIA, YOU ARE INVITED TO BROWSE AS LONG AS YOU LIKE.
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Welcome to our blog, Genzani it story
and this post, massacre in Genzano
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Massacre in the town I came from

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This is the crime scene, where this dreadful thing happened. everybody wonders why this things happen even in a town as quiet as Genzano; We could say that really there is no explanation for this crime.
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Massacre in the town I came from

Massacre in Genzano  
Dear readers this post is going to be an old post that I have posted in hub pages about 4 years ago, I am doing this just to follow my trend of posting, as you know we are talking about my life story and about Genzano di Lucania; anyhow let us tell this very violent story, just as I wrote it the first time when it happened.
This year 2011 in Genzano di Lucania there won’t be any joy for Christmas, no matter which way you look at it, it does not look good. Christmas is supposed to be a peaceful and happy family gathering, and everybody should cherish the company of their friends and close relatives; but this year in Genzano di Lucania this will not happen, and if some people will be able to put aside what has just happened in Genzano will be a small minority.
When such terrible things happen just at Christmas Eve one should be forgiven to thing that there is no God, otherwise why God let this horrible things happen one may ask for good reasons?
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Here are some links that show how the local media reported this crime, they are of course written in Italian as this is the native language of the place.
A meno di 24 ore dalla tragedia che il 24 dicembre ha sconvolto Genzano di Lucania dove Ettore Bruscella ha quasi annientato una famiglia.

What has happened
Listen! My heart cries to hear this horrible news; you see this is the town that I came from and I have always thought that nothing violent would ever happen it this friendly town where everybody knows everybody, so to thinking of murdering people in this town is impossible, but that was/is until today, because today has happened something so horrendous that has changed everything, as a triple murder has happened, and it has happened just on Christmas Eve, so what sort of Christmas will the inhabitant of Genzano have this Christmas?
I am afraid to say, but this Christmas will be a very said one for most Genzanesi, just to think that one of their own has killed three people, it is incomprehensible one can only think and say that the killer has lost his mind, what else can it be?
The killer is 77 years old that means that he is an old man and he should have known better but he didn’t. I have to say that I have talked to the killer a couple of times when I were in Genzano about thirty years ago and he seemed all right then, but when I think about it I have always known that he was a man that would easily turn to violence; So what sort of man is he one may ask?
He is a skinny man of average height very alert and sensitive, he was/is lame I don’t know exactly why or what happened to him when he was young, but somehow I know that he was usually restless even when he was a kid, and as the story goes he peeked up one of those unexploded petard too soon after it fell, but the petard exploded and so he was wounded and became lame. He happened to do that because he belongs to a family that are specialized in firework, and that is why he happened to be there when that unexploded petard fell. Notwithstanding this incident he continued to work at the family fireworks factory and this is what he has mostly done all his life, except perhaps when he migrated to Australia for a few years in the seventies, this is how I can describe this heartless killer, Ettore Bruscella.
You see I have migrated to Australia from this Genzano town when I was young, and I am still in Australia today, therefore we are wondering today to which family the victim belong, there are too many Menchise families in this town, so we wonder whether we can be related to them, there are no description on the Italian news for us old Italians to understand that, you see we would like to see written the names of the parents of the victims, so that we could recall who they are, or a given name that some families have, or perhaps even where they lived or their farm possessions, just to give us a better idea who they are. So we who are away from our native town are left wondering about this fact of life.
Anyhow I am going to publish what I have written already, and by doing that I will be informing my countryman what has happened, and I also hope that some of my countryman will let us know a few more details about this terrible event, so that we may learn the facts as they are.
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Who are they?
Who are the victim’s relatives we wonder?
(I would like to edit and add this discussion to my hub)
As I have already said above, for lack of more detailed information, at this stage we don’t know exactly who the victims are, even though we know their names, we don’t know to which family they belong, they could even be some of our relatives who know. For us that have been away from our native town of Genzano for 50 years or more, it is near impossible to figure out who the victims are, just by using what we have learned from the Italian news, but we would like to know anyhow, so, I and my wife who is also from Genzano have tried to assume to which family the victims could belong, so at the moment we have assumed that the victims may indeed be some distant relatives, I am saying distant as they may fall in that category when we start thinking that we are not related anymore because the link is too far back.
Although I am a Menchise I believe that they are not related to me because of this name, But they could be related to me in a different way. For instance I assume that the victims could be related to me in this way on my mother side, starting from me and working my way back I can see; me, my mother, my grandma and my grandma parents Ceruzzi, from here I could go forward to the present generation of the victims. So, from my grandma parents Ceruzzi who had a large extended family including my great uncle Leonardo who had I believe a son Gerardo who once was vice mayor in the town of Genzano in the fifties and a daughter Marietta who married a Menchise and had a family including Leonardo Menchise who is the husband and father of the victims, this is what we believe they are. I wonder how close we are to the truth.
Here I have to say again that this is only an assumption, or a discussion if you like to call it, that we have had in order to find out who they are?
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One more shock
What we have written about above took place in December 2011 and that was really shocking, but for Genzano di Lucania that quiet town in Southern Italy the trouble are not yet over, as there is another murder in June 2012.
An old lady aged 75 was found dead from one of her relatives, who was wondering why she did not return to Rome, when she had rung them and said that she was returning, anyhow this person went in her house and found her dead.
This is what was reported from the Italian and local media, unfortunately these reports are written in Italian, anyhow these are the links: ( quanto scrive La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno)
(Update (28/06/2012) - È stato fermato dai carabinieri) Stopped by the Carabinieri (Carabinieri is the old way the police were called when there was the monarchy in Italy, today the monarchy is gone but the name remains for this type of police force.)  
Anyhow, the police have stopped this Tunisian, who is the prime suspect and he was living near the house of said old lady murdered and he was about to move or run away from Genzano. Check the link below: 

Genzano di Lucania: fermato un tunisino per l'omicidio di ...


The reasons for this murder are not yet known, but this is another horrible murder, as she was raped and violently beaten causing death, perhaps it was a robbery gone wrong for a start, but who knows?  
At this point of time one should question some other reason why this has happened, since the murder is this Tunisian that broke free from the prison during the civil war in Tunisia and Libya. One should really ask whether it is wise to allow all these refugees freedom on the Italian soil, and whether they should be restricted. Until the authorities make sure that they are real refugees that the war has forced them to flee their country of origin.    
Anyhow, this is all we are going to write in this hub for the time being, until something else comes up about, Genzano di Lucania murderous happenings, or something else that could be reported in a hub like this. So now, let us go back to talk about more attractive things in Genzano.
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I believe that this post has become too long, so see you in our next post, where we are going to write about this castle of Monteserico, which happen to be in Genzano territory; see you soon.

Thursday, November 19, 2015

The fountain spiritual dream

WELCOME TO FRANK MENCHISE BLOG OF GENZANO DI LUCANIA, YOU ARE INVITED TO BROWSE AS LONG AS YOU LIKE.
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Welcome to our blog, Genzano it story
and this post, the fountain spiritual dream
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 The fountain spiritual dream

This is the fountain Cavallina, it has seven spouts if I remember right; the spout that I am talking about in my dream, is the first spout on the right






 The fountain spiritual dream

Dear readers, what we have written about in our last post called, persona twilight story, was something that really happened to me and my friends, but what we are going to tell you next is only a dream that I have dreamed, but we could say that this dream that we are going to tell you may belong also to the twilight or spiritual zone, just like the story above about chasing the white rabbit belongs to the twilight zone.
So, let me tell you my dream, because what I dreamed about is very strange and perhaps interesting, if we observe the dream and the people in it; you see I was dreaming about an old person who wanted to teach me something at my native town fountain called Cavallina, which is the same fountain that we have talked about in our previous post. I know that now you are saying that this is a stupid reason just to tell you a dream and dreams are only dreams and they cannot be classified as being real, but before you judge me and my dream just read what I have to say, because it could be interesting especially if you believe that dreams sometimes have some useful meanings, or they can come from the afterlife world.
To understand this dream better I need to explain that this old person might have been the spirit my great, great, great grandma who lived not far from this fountain, and who had used this fountain during all her life, perhaps she had lived through one of this contagious disease that require washing everything properly to avoid contamination and this is what she wanted to teach me.
When I dreamed this dream I was in Australia in my late forties, but in my dream I was only a boy about ten or eleven years old, (I suppose that this difference in age in the dream wanted to show me that the old lady was a very ancient spirit compared to me), so, this very old lady was standing beside me at this fountain Cavallina, strange as it may seem I had taken some dishes and other eating utensil from the old house where my grandma lived to wash at the fountain; the old lady was telling me to wash everything under the first spout of the fountain and keep everything in the first bay very near this first spout, so that they would not be contaminated, and so I did; but as you know dreams sometime are very strange and suddenly I found that some of my dishes were in the second bay of the fountain, so I started to worry about it, but the old lady said to me not to worry about it, I was protesting to her saying that you said that the other bays are contaminated, and she said don’t worry just for this time and you will soon know why, when you wake up.
Then after the dream ended, I woke up and realised that it was only a dream, so I understood why the old lady had said do not worry about the dishes in the second bay of the fountain for this time, it was because it was only a dream and the dishes even though had been contaminated in my dream, I was not going to use them anyhow, just because they were only in my dreams, and they were thousands of miles away, in another era and in another place. I believe that the old lady was one of my forebear who popped up in my dreams to teach me a lesson about food contamination or something like that, and she did.
Well, today you might say that we all know that to avoid contamination you have to keep everything clean and that is true; we can also use some disinfectant that would kill all germs, so there is not much to learn from this dream. But you see, the old lady did this in a dream using the level of general knowledge when she was alive, which most likely was a lot lower than today standard. Anyhow that is what I dreamed and I think it is pretty cool, if we believe in these sorts of things. And now let us see what else I could tell you about my personal dreams or twilight stories.
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Strange things happen
What we have already told you are a couple of our twilight stories or dreams, I suppose that during our life we have all seen and heard many things that now we could tell the others, it is our life experiences that we like to tell. So I would like to write another story or two here, as you may know some other life stories we have already written in hub pages, therefore here under we are posting some links, so that you could read them if you like, but at the same time let me tell you another story straight away that is very similar to the stories above and could be said to be another twilight or spiritual story.
In order to understand this story it is necessary that first I describe the place where it has happened and the reasons why it has happened there and then tell you what happened.
This near spiritual or twilight story happened to me when I was a teenager I think that I could have been 17 years old in our family farm. Our family farm buildings consisted of two large rustic rooms plus other small buildings beside them, one of these buildings was used to store all the farm carts and machinery and the other was our main building that we used for the farm animals and ourselves. Now before I continue I need to say that our farm was wall to wall with other farmers next door, so I was not completely alone in the middle of nowhere, but at the same time I was alone. The reason I have said that is to explain that while I was left alone in charge of all the animals in our building at night so young, it was possible because our farm was besides this other farm building where other people were also sleeping at night, so it was safe enough from robbers and other things, as we could always call on each other, if help was really needed. 
The main and larger building consisted of a rustic building about 12 meters long and 8 meters wide or there about; two third of this building was used for the large farm animals, like horses, mules, donkeys and cows who were tied to a manager at night, the other third of this building was used for ourselves, here we stored some oats and other valuable produce that we would use day to day to feed the animals and the rest of this space was for us humans, where we could cook our meals and sleep at night while we were attending the farm animals. Now before I move to tell you that part of story that we could call the spiritual or twilight story, I need to say that in this building there was also two pair of domestic pigeons that nested there and they would fly around the building during the day, at night they would stay in their nest or perched on some place in the building.
Now that we have explained that let us tell you what happen one night, this was the night when my grandpa died and this farm house was his farm house and it had been their family farm for generations, so the old man was very attached to his farm; anyhow I was alone and sleeping in the farm the nigh he died and while I was sleeping I could somehow feel that something was flying around the farm house, whatever it was it was going and stopping for a few seconds here and there as if it wanted to inspect the place, once it had done that it flew out of the small open window at the back of the farm building, and that was that.
Next day the news came that my grandpa had passed away that night, and that I had to go to town to attend his funeral. One may say that this is a strange story and perhaps I was only dreaming that night about this thing that went around all the farm building, but one should also consider that if souls really exist then my grandpa soul came to say goodbye to his earthly possessions and to me his grandchild.
That is all for the time being, but I know that I can add here another spiritual twilight story, but this story is going to be very difficult to tell, so has got to be another time, when I review these articles and posts.
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Since we have been talking in our last two hubs about the town of Genzano di Lucania, which is indeed the town that I have come from originally, when I came to Australia. I have been thinking that perhaps it would be the right thing to do; if in our next post we will be talking about a terrible happening that has happened recently. See you soon.