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A Byzantine(?) castle in the Val di Magra: Surianum—Filattiera
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 August 2013
Extract
The steep-sloped, one-hundred-and-ninety-foot hill on the north crest of which lies the village of Filattiera dominates the valley of the Magra between Pontremoli and Aulla and provides a remarkable view of the mountain-ranges to the northeast, north and west. The village itself still has very much the appearance of a late-medieval community in which considerations of defence predominated over all others. First recorded in 1029 among lands sold to the Otbertings and subsequently an important ‘fief’ of the Malaspina, Filattiera's documented history is carried back another three centuries by a unique inscription of the reign of Aistulf (749–757) discovered in 1910 in the chapel of S. Giorgio. In spite of a puzzling reference to the destruction of idols, there seems no good reason for doubting the inscription's authenticity. It has been the starting-point of a number of local studies of great interest, coming in particular from the pen of Signor U. Formentini, which because of their publication in periodicals with a limited circulation have not attracted the attention they deserve.
My own interest in Filattiera was aroused by the statement of a guide-book that the chapel of S. Giorgio was associated with the remains of a ‘castle.’
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Papers of the British School at Rome , Volume 24: Studies in Italian Medieval History , November 1956 , pp. 14 - 21
- Copyright
- Copyright © British School at Rome 1956
References
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45 The best account of which is still that of Hartmann, L. M., Untersuch. z. Gesch. der Byz. Verwaltung in Italien, Leipzig, 1889Google Scholar, passim, although it needs to be corrected and amplified at many points.
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47 Cf. Schneider, Burg u. Landgemeinde, ch. i, passim. In Reichsverwaltung, p. 48 f., Schneider had shown himself inclined to accept a Lombard origin of Carfaniana and of its associated fines and by implication, therefore, of Castronovo and its fines.
48 Coniunx Tzittani com. et trib. at Albenga (Liguria), CIL, v, 7793, ILS, no. 8258; the tribunus normally commanded a numerus. For counts of castles, cf. Reg. Greg. I., ix, 71 of 598 and Hartmann, Untersuchungen, pp. 58, 155. Compare also the comes Langobardorum de Lagare of Paul the Deacon, , Hist. Lang., iii, 9Google Scholar, perhaps imitating Byzantine or earlier precedents: Lagare (from which the modern Valle Lagarina), Ligeris in Rav. iv, 30, is perhaps Gothic (see Gamillscheg, ii, 70) for ‘camp.’
49 For the inclusion of S. Benedetto see the diploma of 772, the identification being established by a diploma of 851 for the same recipient (S. Giulia, Brescia), Böhmer-Muhlbacher, 1147. For Albareto see the Aulla charter of 884.
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51 Böhmer-Mühlbacher, no. 1243 (of 870). Pietra Bismantova is Κάστρον Βισμαντῶ in George of Cyprus (n. 623; ed. Honigmann, p. 53). It is just possible that a gastald of Surianum is the man commemorated in the Filattiera inscription: but there is no real evidence for this.
52 So Formentini in Bolletino Storico Piacentino, xxv, 1930, p. 3 ff.Google Scholar; Banti, op. cit., p. 86.
53 But if the eastern boundary of the Fines Carfanienses had once been the Byzantine-Lombard frontier this would make the change even more explicable.
54 I would like to thank Mr. Martin Fredriksen and Miss Joyce Reynolds for their criticisms and suggestions; and also Mr. Richard Goodchild, former librarian of the British School, who first encouraged me to look for archaeological remains of the Byzantine limes in Italy.