THE MUNICIPAL HISTORICAL FILE
By Anna Maria Corbo
For a correct knowledge of the history of a Community the primary sources which it’s indispensable to look for are mainly those conserved in the historical File, the Library and the picture-gallery. Collaterally to these, other sources can be considered subsidiary such as the ones that are in private hands, ecclesiastical entities or public monuments.
Certainly, in first position is placed the historical File is intended to be treated in high-priority, either because of the antiquity of the documentation, or due to its implication in all the problems that interest the community, that attests the political role assumed by the City council in the diverse periods. The oldest documentation, that goes back to 1199, is conserved in the collection of parchments that constitutes the diplomatic fund.
This collection, whose unit is constituted by the written materials used, that’s to say, the skins of animals, comprises diverse documents that include from the Statutes to the concessions of privileges by the imperial, papal and feudal authorities; but there are contracts also referred to earth or real transactions, private acts requested by the notary, the figure that in the continuous change of political authorities represents the constant of public faith that was the only guarantee for legal validity of the acts.
Documentation in paper appears at the end of the 13th Century (time of the first Cadastre of San Ginesio) when still the parchment was used contemporarily.
It’s little the documentary testimony of the years between the end of the 14th Century and the first half of the 15th Century (in those years the feudal relations between Popes and gentlemen were particularly difficult), whereas it’s of great interest the works between the second half of the 15th Century and the beginning of the 16th, period to which corresponds the maximum splendor of the Town Hall of San Ginesio.
This is corroborated by new constructions, the increase of the population, the presence of artists like Pietro, Alemanno, Lorenzo d’ Alessandro, Stefano Folchetti and the Salimbeni of San Severino.
The 25 of August, for the celebration of the Patron Saint, in addition to the playful manifestations for the races of redondel and sword, a great number of musicians from bordering regions and even from more far away, met in San Ginesio. Valuable data are extracted from documents of the File for the study of the musical tradition in the zone of Macerata.
In the first twenty years of the 1500 the political situation changes suddenly and begins the decay of the Town hall of San Ginesio. In fact, with the introduction of the State of the Church, promoted by Jules II, in the international political game of Charles V and Francis I, that made the war in Italy (remember the sacking of Rome in 1527 under Clement VII), begins the fiscal devastations and tax impositions with the consequent impoverishment of the population. In the second half of the century another reason for concern falls on the suspicious population of San Ginesio, that’s to say, the luteran heresy, among whom Matteo and Alberico Gentilio, forced to exile. Of Alberico, founder of the international law and in favor of the peace in the relations between the countries by means of the arbitration, it’s conserved in this File the text of the citizen Statutes written up by him in 1577 and soon reviewed in the printed edition of 1582. Also Sixto V opressed the community of Macerata, already besieged by the banditry, the plague and the scarcity and, in addition, by the taxes for the prisons and the defense of the coasts against the threat of the Turks who in 1683 besieged Vienna. At the beginning of the 17th Century an important devotional event is verified: in 1601, by concession of Pope Clemente VIII, the relics of the martyrs San Ginesio and San Eleuterio were transferred from the Roman church of San Giovanni della Pigna to the Collegiate church of San Ginesio. In that occasion the painter Domenico Malpiedi painted the great paintings representing both martyrs, copies of the fresco paintings made by Giovanni Battista Pozzo in the Roman church of Saint Susana, placed in the nave of the right and left side of the Collegiate church. Meanwhile the descendent curve of the history of San Ginesio continued: scarcity of grain, contraband of it, increase of the price of the bread, the outpost of the Turks. The 1700 is opened and closed with two disastrous earthquakes. From the 14 of January 1703 continuos shocks were felt in San Ginesio that caused damages to the Council tower, to the interior of the portico of the council palace and to the church of Saint Rocco. Of the most disastrous earthquake, on 28 July 1799, the file conserves a detailed description done by the architect Pietro Augustoni di Pano. From a political point of view, the most traumatic event of the century was the Napoleonic occupation, of which it’s left much handwritten and printed documentation that includes many edicts and legislative texts. The following period, of the pontifical Restoration (1815-1860), also offers interesting elements to investigate, related mainly to the restrictive dispositions about the public spectacles that nevertheless seemed happy enough. In 1847 a musical society called Philharmonic Society of the Autumn Concert was instituted, which in 1872 would become the citizen Philharmonic society with its own regulation. Fallen the pontifical power in 1870, the City council of San Ginesio had administrators of high cultural level, between them outstanded the mayor Aristide Morichelli, his close collaborator the dialectal poet Alfonso Leopardi and the representatives of the local nobility. In 1877 the citizen theater was inaugurated, named Giacomo Leopardi, with a work of the master from San Ginesio Vincenzo Bruti: Addina, that’s to say, the weddings in Pasquella, with libretto of Alfonso Leopardi.
The 20th Century opened with the mobilization of the
executive Committee for a monument in honor of Alberico
Gentili, ordered to the florentine sculptor Giuseppe
Guastalla, and placed in 1908 in the bigger square of
the city. After the first and second World War deep
changes arrived to the society of San Ginesio: the local
nobility and the clergy were replaced by a new leading
class of rural extraction whose inappropiated cultural
level endangered the existence of the enormous
historical patrimony and preponderantly artistic one
that the predecessors had gathered and conserved. Now
it’s in phase of recovery but a great part has been
irremediably lost. This brief note - the argument would
required much more space – wants to indicate the great
possibilities of research that the File offers and to
demand the attention of the citizens and the
administrators for a better management of it, that also
means a good use and valuation of the cultural patrimony
of San Ginesio. |
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