-
Welcome to our blog, Genzano it story
and this post The other castle of Genzano
-
The castle of Monteserico
This is the castle of Monteserico
This is 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 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 of Monteserico
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 here
under. 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 this post and then try to visit
the place preferably during spring or summer.
-----------------------------------
Explaining these photos above and below.
Here above is the chapel of the Madonna of Monteserico, but the original
Monteserico Madonna picture has been stolen, and somebody replaced by a cheap
picture; so the town of Genzano ordained the painter Pedota to paint a portrait
of our Madonna Maria SS Delle Grazie and in 1953 they had a feast and relaced
the cheap picture with this new painted image. So today this chapel of
Monteserico has this new picture of, Maria SS delle Grazie patron Saint of
Genzano as the main Madonna, It is said that, here the inhabitant of Genzano
need to make a feast at least once a year otherwise they lose possession of
Monteserico chapel and the possession will pass to the family De Chio of
Spinazzola, as they were the last owners or tenants of the place.
Below is a photo of the castle taken from a far away field, you see in
this part of the country there are only fields that are used to grow wheat or
other produce and not much else stretching away for miles. This photo reminds
me about the thousands of time that I have seen this castle from our family
farm, when I was young.
The castle seen from the fields.
Then there is this photo of this poster about the inauguration of Monteserico Castle after the restoration, where the names of people that have contributed and other things are shown.
Then there is this photo of this poster about the inauguration of Monteserico Castle after the restoration, where the names of people that have contributed and other things are shown.
--------------------------
About the castle of Monteserico
Monteserico castle seems to be built different from most other castles.
It is shaped rectangular or almost square, one can say that it is more a
military fortress than a real castle; it is built in stones of every shape and
size, and today it would be hard to find builders or tradesmen that would be
able to build something like that, even though there are some tradesmen as we
can see from the entry pathway that looks almost new, and it is almost
identical to the castle masonry; however we know that it has been added later,
because this castle had a trench around it a long time ago for reasons of
defence, but this added entry pathway makes it easy to enter the castle, so it
is a later addition and it looks good. Anyhow these two photos one above and
one below are there to show you how the castle is like today.
Anyhow let us look at some history of this castle of Monteserico, but
before we do that we need to point out that the castle of Monteserico looks
exactly like one of the Norman castle in Normandy France; see our hub Genzano
di Lucania history, in the subtitle section The Normans in Italy; where I ask
this French army captain about the castle in Normandy and the way he explains
it to me. So first of all we need to prove that the Normans were in these parts
of Southern Italy and then we could link what is historically known with our
own understanding of the situation, so here under is some evidence that we are
going to quote from:
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia
The Norman conquest of southern Italy spanned most of the 11th and 12th
centuries, involving many battles and many independent players conquering
territories of their own. Only later were these territories in southern Italy united as the Kingdom of Sicily, which
included not only the island of Sicily, but also the entire southern third of the Italian Peninsula (save Benevento, which they did briefly
hold on two occasions) as well as the archipelago of Malta
and parts of North Africa.
Opportunistic
bands of Normans successfully established a foothold in Southern Italy (the Mezzogiorno). Probably the
result of returning pilgrims' stories, the Normans entered the Mezzogiorno as warriors in 1017 at the latest. In
999, according to Amatus of Montecassino, pilgrims returning from Jerusalem called in at the port of Salerno when a Saracen attack occurred. The Normans
fought so valiantly that Prince Guaimar III begged
them to stay, but they refused and instead offered to tell others back home of
the prince's request. William of Apulia tells
that, in 1016, pilgrims to the shrine of the Archangel Michael at Monte Gargano were
met by Melus of Bari, a Lombard freedom-fighter, who
persuaded them to return with more warriors to help throw off the Byzantine rule, which they did.
(End of quote)
In some written stories or history about Genzano and this castle of
Monteserico, there is this famous Norman leader (Roberto il Guiscardo) Robert
Guiscard that is said to own the castle of Monteserico as also some battles
that happened around this castle, here is a link about Robert Guiscard.
.jpg)
Robert Guiscard
Robert Guiscard -
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
From what we have been able to write and explain here, it is that for
certain the Normans have used this castle extensively and perhaps modified it
or partly built it, and since Robert Guiscard (Duke of Apulia) was there, we
would guess that this castle might really have been the main Norman castle of
Southern Italy from where the Norman ruled over their conquest.
I believe that this post is becoming to long, so we will continue to talk about the castle of Monteserico in our next post.
-------------------------------
Genzano it story
The other castle of Genzano
IS GOING TO BE CONTINUED;
Next time with, another post about the castle
-------------------------------------------
Some useful links
Some hub links
--------------------------
