San Vincenzo al Volturno, 1857

The narrow road from Pizzone to Castel San Vincenzo travels four kilometers across the valley floor up onto a rocky ridge along the lower slopes of Monte Vallone. Prior to 1928, Castel San Vincenzo had been two villages: the first, along the top of the ridge and built on ancient fortifications, was Castellone – or Castellum, as it was recorded in the medieval Chronicon Vulturnense – the second, a little lower down, was San Vincenzo al Volturno.

Castel San Vincenzo with the Mainarde behind.
Photograph by the author.

During Roman times, these lands were known as Samnium, named for the Sanniti, or Samnites, the fierce Italic tribe who had inhabited the region for centuries and with whom the Romans fought three wars. In place names such as Civitanova del Sannio or Mirabello Sannitico, and in archaeological ruins such as the temple and theater unearthed in Pietrabbondante or the cyclopean wall at Colli a Volturno, and in the passion of the people for their history, the presence of the Sanniti is felt here still.

Beneath the heights of Castel San Vincenzo is the Rocchetta plain, which from the age of Augustus had been the site of villas and agricultural estates, some likely connected to prominent families from nearby Isernia, a provincial capital then as it is now. According to the Chronicon, the emperor Constantine was travelling through the Apennines and stopped here in a densely wooded area to rest in the cool shade. After eating a large meal, he fell asleep and had a vision of three saints who told him to build an oratory here in this place of wild beasts and solitude. Constantine’s oratory, forgotten in this wilderness, would be discovered three centuries later by three noblemen from Benevento to the south. Paldo, Tato, and Taso, as they were known, would choose this place as the site of their abbey, which they would dedicate to Saint Vincent, the Spanish deacon martyred during the time of Constantine’s grandfather, during the last and the bloodiest of the persecutions of Christians, which occurred during the reign of the emperor Diocletian.

The Rocchetta plain seen from Castel San Vincenzo.
Photograph by the author.

The abbey, near the source of the Volturno River, would become known as San Vincenzo al Volturno. With Paldo as its first abbot and with generous land grants from the Beneventan nobility, it would gain great prominence in the years to come, becoming a rival to the great sixth-century abbey at nearby Monte Cassino, even hosting first Aistulf and then Desiderius, the Lombard kings whose tribe had first come to this region two hundred years before. In 773, Charlemagne began his campaign against Desiderius. The victory of the Carolingians, however, did not upset the social order established by the Lombards. Instead, they supported it, bringing about a technical and cultural renaissance. The Church was an important part of this, and as a result San Vincenzo became a center of learning and political power in the medieval world.

Abbot Epyphanius from the fresco
in the Crypt of Epyphanius. The square
halo indicates he was alive at the time
this was painted.
Photograph by the author.

By 824, when Abbot Epyphanius took office, San Vincenzo was at its zenith. Abbot Epyphanius would finish the great works begun by his predecessors, completing the monastic city with the basilica San Vincenzo Maggiore at its heart. But difficult years were ahead. After surviving a violent earthquake in 847, San Vincenzo would be raided and burned in 881 by an Arab-Berber band. The monks defended the abbey. Hundreds were killed, according to the Chronicon, before they were overwhelmed, the survivors fleeing to Capua. It would be thirty-five years before they would return and start to rebuild.

By the end of the tenth century, much of the abbey, including San Vincenzo Maggiore, remained in ruins. The abbey had lost much of its lands, leasing them to settlers. The Chronicon records a twenty-nine year lease given in 945 by Abbot Leo to four men: Lupus, son of Teudosus; Petrus, son of Yselbertus; Adelbertus, son of Flora; and Adus, son of Leopardus. This was the charter for Castro Samnie, the Samnite past recognized in the naming of this village that would become Castel San Vincenzo. In the next century, a new abbey would be built across the Volturno, across the hump-backed Roman bridge, which still exists, known as the Ponte della Zingara or Bridge of the Gypsy. The ruins of the old abbey would serve for building materials.

The Virgin Mary as Queen in the
Crypt of Epyphanius.
Photograph by the author.

Over the next eight hundred years, the old site would be covered over, its exact location lost. It was not until March 10, 1832, that the Crypt of Epyphanius was found accidentally beneath a barn belonging to Domenico Notardonato, who immediately notified his priest. Viewing the crypt through a small rectangular window, the priest could see that it was partially filled with earth, but in the gloom a glimpse of the muted colors of the frescoes which covered the walls could be seen. It would be the end of the century before this crypt was entered and the beauty of the Byzantine frescoes revealed.

It was into this world, on July 17, 1857, on Via Centrale, past the twelfth-century gate known as the Portale San Filippo, that my great-grandfather, Carmine Di Julio, father of Emiddio, was born to Michele Di Julio and his wife Angela Maria Concetta Vacca. In four years, the world for little Carmine would change. As the decade of the Italian unification, or Risorgimento, began, the ancient feudal past of his father began to come unwound. There would be new challenges to these people of the Terra di Lavoro to whom nationalization would feel more like conquest and colonization by the North. Besides hunger and the loss of land, there would be the brigante, the bandits with little to lose who would roam these hills in the years to come, occupying Castellone and San Vincenzo twice in 1861 alone. 

Portale San Filippo, Castel San Vincenzo.
Photograph by the author.

On the rounded ceiling of the Crypt of Epyphanius, inside the small window as far as could be reached, graffiti was found. I think of my great-grandfather. I imagine the adolescent, who, perhaps, came to this place with other village boys – or, perhaps, on a dare, in the dead of night, by himself to make his mark. I try to see what he would have seen, to hear what he would have heard, to smell the odors carried on the night air. In this way, I hope to close the gap, to erase the distance of the years back to this man I never knew but whose essence is in my bloodstream. In a few years, Carmine would marry the young girl across the valley in Pizzone. Together they would start a new life on Via Centrale. Like other young people in the village, they would want better – for themselves and for their children. They would save what money they could. They would plan with the others, and together they would book their passage. There was courage in numbers. And together they would cross the Atlantic to the New World.