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.