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Poppi |
 Images: P.C. |
| When more
of a millenium ago the Hungarians came for their first
raids in Lombardy and Liguria, stealing everywhere and
slaughtering lots of people, the Casentino, at that time
called Corte (as appearing in Charlemagne Diploma),
received many refugees that defending themselves from the
invaders, prefered brushwoods to villages, solitude of mountains to the corrupted cities. In his "Critical illustration and description of Casentino" (1865), abbÈ Pietro Porcellotti from Rassina tells these people were gradually civilized and besides funding remarkable monasteries such as Camaldoli and Verna, gathered around castles owned by some laic and religious feudatories: at Chiusi, Bibbiena, Romena. Yet not all the feudatories revealed themselves to be pacific: particularly, Counts Guidi of Modigliana, that from half of XII century subjected the most part of the valley, surrounded themselves of salaried bandits and modified in fact the temper of the inhabitants, already by nature (breathing a colder air) more resolute than the ones living on the plain. The Counts Guidi were involved in the wellknown battle of Campaldino that took place on 11th of June 1289, not far from Certomondo convent, won by the Florentine army and ending the fortunes of Ghibellines in Tuscany. This battle is also remembered at the beginning of the XXIIth chant of Dante's Inferno, who was involved in it at twentyfour, with ten hundred foot-soldiers and one hundred knights. At the beginning, when it seemed the fate of the battle was by the Aretins side, Dante Alighieri, who was a Florentine Guelph, had huge fear, but when the Ghibellines left thousands of men on the battlefield, including their condottiere Bishop Guglielmino degli Ubertini, the Poet could safely and happily dismount. It's told that that country remained untilled for a long time and farmers did not find courage to work on it as, so drenched with blood, became unproductive. On site, a column surmounted by Florence and Arezzo bearings, in the name of Dante, warns people coming from Borgo about the absurdity of fratricidal warfares and praises the Italian brotherhood pact. In the following centuries, as said in "The natural history of Casentino" by Dr. Luigi Tramontani from Pratovecchio, dated 1801, the Medicean Princedom granted prosperity and peace to the valley: the best part of the Casentini remained, characterized by a lively talent that "if driven to good makes them skilled in arts, science and poetry, if driven to evil makes them easily haughty, astute and revengeful". Generally the dalesmen were brave and excellent soldiers. They were absolute enemies of the liars, stingier than splendid, more frugal than dissolute, more religious than libertine. |
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