The history
R i n a s c i t a
The most ancient peoples living in Ascoli Piceno have left traces of their presence up to the Paleolithic Åge. Only later, from the Neolithic Age and the Age of Metal, the evidence becomes more probing and gives proof of stable settlements of agricultural and pastoral economies. According to ancient legends, gathered by Silio Italico, Ascoli is said to have been founded by Pelasgian King Aesis. It is also probable that the city derives its name from the Aegean-Anatolian root as meaning urban settlement and to be found in many other ancient cities in the Mediterranean area. According to Festo, instead, Picenun owes its name to the Sabini, who, upon emigrating to the present day Ascoli to celebrate the sacred spring, a pagan festivity, raised up as their emblem the woodpecker, a bird sacred to Mars. Thanks to its strong geographical position, that is its position of block between two rivers, the Tronto and the Castellano, and the brook Chiaro, Ascoli slowly assumed a very strong importance. If in 268 b.C. Picenum enters under the influence of Rome, Ascoli is able to conserve its indipendence even though it is forced to accept the condition of civitas foederata. It must already be a big commercial centre if Strabone defines it now as the noblest colony Asculum Piceni, nowdomiti hinc Picentes et caput gentis Asculum.
At the beginning of 91 b.C. a social war broke out, fought by the Italici Peoples against Roman supremacy. Ascoli plays such an important role that it even marks its starting. It claims, in the name of the Italic populations - socii - the Roman citizenship in order to participate in the administration and direction of the Empire under equal conditions. The killings of proconsul Quinto Servilio, of legate Fonteio and all the Romans entering the urban enclosure in order to reproach the Ascolans, guilty of plotting against Roman aristocracy, mark the beginning of the hostilities between Rome and Ascoli. The tradition tells they were murdered in the Roman theatre during a spectacle. This tragic fact of blood sets off the reaction of Rome. Pompeo Strabone departs from the capital with a strong army in order to bring Ascoli back to obedience. Initially the army is beaten many times by the local people, who are placed in an invincible military position because of the nature and craft. But after a long siege lasting two and a half years, the town had to cede to the fortune of the enemy army, subjugated above all by the disparity of the military force Rome was the strongest in. The town's defence is headed by Caio Vidacilio, who, upon defeat, prefers to finish his days together with his lost freedom (89 b.C.). Today we can still see evidences of the long seige. It is possible to find the acorn shaped lead missiles in the fields closest to the town and especially along the streambed of the Castellano where they have been driven by the rains. Many Ascolani give proof of their sublime valour and military genius. Ventidio Basso, a local general's son taken to Rome together with his mother behind Strabone's triumphal carriage, will reach the high grades of magistrate and pontifex. Tito Vetuzio Barro will become famous in Rome, too.
But the Roman victors have no pity for the losers. The local chiefs are slaughtered, many citizens are exiled, as the historians witness. Floro writes the entire town was destroyed. Further on, Cicerone defines Ascoli municipalis honestissimi, ac nobilissimi generis.
Caesar is in a hurry to take control of the town, crosses the Rubicone, putting into flight Lentulo Spintere, who in precedence had occupied Ascoli with ten cohorts. Plinio tells on Ascoli as a colony of remarkable importance. Ancient inscriptions certify its important position reached.
In Roman Itineraria, that are schematic descriptions in a logistic manner of the roads, Ascoli is stated as being situated on the Salaria, a road which leaves from Rome, at Porta Collina, passes along the rivers Velino and Tronto, reaches Asculum at roughly one hundred and twenty miles and then arrives at Castrum Truentinum, at the mouth of the river Tronto on the Adriatic coast.
Under triumviral Rome, Ascoli raises up again more splendid than ever. Many are the Roman monuments, well conserved, which have survived to our days: Porta Gemina, Ponte di Cecco, Ponte Augusteo on the river Tronto, the remains of the Theatre and Amphitheatre, two temples - one of Corinthian order, the other probably of Ionian order - now absorbed by the Churches of San Gregorio and San Venanzio. Examples of Roman housing are not missing either; in fact, ruins of them were discovered during the work of restoration of Law Courts and Palazzo dei Capitani. One famous finding is the uncovering of the emblematic polychrome mosaic with a central mask, now conserved in the local State Archeological Museum.
Under the Empire, Ascoli is cited with honour in the divisions of the provinces made by Augusto and later by Antonio Pio in 152 A.D. Under this latter emperor Asculum came acquainted with the first Christian persecutions with lots of martyrs, Santa Venera and Sant'Antimo among.
In 301 the town is the seat of the Governor of Picenum Suburbicarium in opposition to Picenum Annonarium which was under the jurisdiction of Ancona.
In the same year the town has its own residential bishop, Sant'Emidio, who, appointed under the precise desire of pope Marcellino, in spite of respectful denial, managed in a brief time to infuse a new life to local Christian community and to conquer an undisputed spiritual authority.
With the barbarian invasion, Ascoli begins knowing a notable economic and intellectual decay. The widespread and growing misery don't stimulate nor encourage any new construction. Life is reduced to an economy of subsistence, with refuge in the bosom of the Church and priests.
Ascoli manages to defend itself from the Visigotes of Alarico and Ataulfo, who, impressed by the town walls and the natural gully made up by the Tronto and the Castellano impossible to be crossed, withdrew from the town without taking it. They supplied men and animals with food and drink from the surrounding countryside, plundering and killing where they could. The strategic situation of the town advises them to turn their goals somewhere else.
The Gothic Totila, instead, succeeds in his intent. After occupying all the castles of the countryside, he puts the town under siege. The town has to surrender, not only due to hunger, but because of the bloody plague, too.
Paolo Diacono remembers the town as the principal town of the Picenum. In 553, after the defeat and the killings of Totila and Treia, the town passes under the rule of the Exarchate of Ravenna. Lots of Greeks settle in Ascoli and the power, nominally, is exercised by an Archonte or Dux, but in reality by a bishop who slowly increments his authority.
After reducing the fortresses of Castel Trosino and Murro into graves for the Greeks, Faroaldo beseiges Ascoli from lots of sides and plunders it (578). He strangles citizens, demolishes towers, destroys churches and palaces, dismantles the town walls. The hermit Agostino distinguishes himself amongst the men devoting themselves to the extreme defence of the town. After leaving the hermitage of San Marco, he preaches on the necessity of fighting and resisting till the end against the waves of Longobards, but he and his men in rags, barefoot and hungry, have to surrender in the end. According to horrible Barbaric customs, Agostino is dragged into the town tied to the tail of a horse together with his three sons. They finally end up pierced by pikes and erected burnt in the houses as war trophies. The town is burnt for the second time, after the Roman Strabone's. Only in 593, Queen Teodolinda agrees to the reconstruction of the city and the castles, as well as the return of fugitives.
Left finally in peace by Longobards, Ascoli becomes part of the territory of the Duke of Spoleto for over two centuries, even though not always following the destinies and the desires of such.
The work of Gregorio Magno, who thanks to Teodolinda manages to convert all the Longobard Court to the Catholic faith, obtains great results, lessening not only the contrasts, but also the avversions of the local people against the Longobards.
With the end of the seventh century, the chronical history of the local bishops takes on more and more importance, not only religious, but also political. Their interference in the government of the diocese widens considerably, also in consideration of excellent bishops such as Felice and Euclere, the latter even Longobard.
The Duke of Spoleto Ildeprando submits his duchy to the Church and shaves his beard as a sign of submission, according to the Roman custom (774). As a sign of recognition for his gesture and in spite of the Longobard defeat on the part of the Franks, pope Adriano reintegrates the duke into his position upon the condition that he goes under the dipendence of Charlemagne. In this way begins the decay of the power of the dukes of Spoleto, who starts to become nothing more than simple officials of the Carolingian dinasty. This historical process is completed in 789, when the Frankish Guinigiso marks the end of the Longobard domination and its influence on Ascoli, up until that date bound to the events of the Duchy of Spoleto. So the town becomes a county under papal protection, with a layman count at the head, in turn assisted, in the exercise of his power, by the local nobility. The city raises to the rank of chief town of the county of the Sacred Roman Empire under the dipendence of Charlemagne, who reserves it a particular juridical condition due to its singular strategic position. From Ascoli the emperor, in fact, can easily reach Rome for vindications of any type, travelling along the Salaria Road or across the Duchy of Benevento on the other side of Tronto.
Then the town passes into the hands of various bishop-counts, whose authority derives not due to the fact of being bishops of the city, but because they are counts of the Empire.This misunderstanding will become the reason of conflict and fighting above all during the period of Municipalities, when Ascoli will have to defend its indipendence.
The first bishop-count is Emmone who reorganizes well the city, aware of the double temporal and spiritual power of his position. With wise conduct he does everything possible in order that the functions remain separate, giving the clerists certain duties and the laymen others more in conformity with their functions. The bishop-count is given the privilege of coining money, which carries the inscriptions S. Emidius and de Esculo. The city will conserve this right until the end of eighteenth century. In the meantime many towers (82 in twenty-eight years) and some bridges are built. On his part the bishop-count Stefano gives a strong impulse to this urban aspect that the city will undertake during the Middle Ages.
So many towers in such a little time must, however, not certainly be a sign of peace, but the expression, in nuce, of a party, faction spirit. Something certainly is growing in the shadows. Fights are predicted for investitures, the eternal manichean division between Guelphs and Ghibellines.
The internal discords are nourished by a privilege allowed by Urbano II (1091). The local Chapter is given the right to elect its own bishop-count, to be ratified later with a papal nomination. If this increases the power and the prestige to ecclesiastics, the laymen can only claim a lay authority that counterattracts to recuperate power. To this end a large group of partisans of the imperial power is formed, headed by Argillano. This man incites the discontent of some citizens and it is about to bring on a civil war in the city, by now in the hands of the anarchists. Opposite factions line up and it seems that the situation might degenerate into a blood bath.
The bishop-count Stefano, a man of a fine sense of politics, during the procession of patron Sant'Emidio, preaches to his citizens upon the necessity of going to Holy Land in order to liberate Saint Sepulchre rather than killing oneself in one's own country soil for reasons, according to him, not very serious. If, in fact, all Christianity is preparing itself for the first Crusade, it is the duty of the Ascolans to divert their energy and their exuberance towards those shores rather than to stay in their home country and quarrel. The bishop's aim meets with full success. Argillano himself is put at the head of the troops, strong with fourteen captains and one thousand and four hundred men. Great are their deeds and the death of Argillano, if Torquato Tasso records them with an ardent epitaph in Gerusalemme Liberata.
After the brief Oriental parenthesis, quarrels between the partisans of the Empire and of the Pope resume more violently than ever, followed by bloody factions. Only bishop Presbitero is able to conciliate them, after inviting in Ascoli no less than the Guelph emperor Lotario, who appoints him count.
The succession of the Ghibelline Corrado III to the throne complicates the situation, but once again bishop Presbiterio succeeds in dominating the quarrelling factions (1225). He himself travels to Germany, in spite of difficult times, for being interceded on his behalf by the Emperor himself. He, to compensate him, elevates him to the role of Prince, title which still to this day the Bishop of Ascoli keeps as a right.
As great are the humanistic and spiritual works of Presbiterio, so great is his pain in seeing the havocs and the mournings that the soldiers of Barbarossa, headed by the legate Cristiano of Magonza, cause to the city.
With 1183, year of the death of the bishop Gisone, Ascoli has its first mayor and the costitution of a municipal government like other Italian cities. And in so doing, terminates the two-fold power, religious and lay, of the bishop-count and the municipal regime is established except for majestate pontificia.
Henry IV, who came to Italy to liquidate the count of Lecce Manfredi, is received and praised in Ascoli twice. Francis of Assisi arrives at the city, too. He comes to preach peace and to set up the first convent with thirty priests and laymen (1225).
Frederick II occupies and sacks the town in order to bring it to the obedience of the Emperor. Tradition wants the city had more than two hundred towers before the destruction of ninety of them effected by Frederick II. The sum is probably slightly exagerated, but the city remains in flames for many days, for the third time in its history, after Strabone's and Faroaldo's. The consuls are chained and imprisoned. The bishop is exiled, the Guelph dynast dies in the slaughter. On this inhuman tragedy, the Ghibelline faction celebrates its triumph, transforming the old county into a strong municipal state, tied to the Emperor's destiny. Their men, conscious the city's position offers them the possibility of quick strategic raids towards any target, give Ascoli the right to rebuild its fortified port at the mouth of the river Tronto, the ancient Castrum Truentinum , in the present day covered by sand and destroyed by time. This privilege, completed in the course of three years, offends, however, the old concession made to Fermo by Ottone IV, on the full possession of the Adriatic shores from the river Potenza to the Tronto, so provoking long and disastrous wars between the two cities that will last, with alternate episodes, until the first half of sixteenth century.
Pope Giovanni XXIII gives the imperial concession the papal countersignature, conferming to the Ascolans the posssession in perpetual feud of the port, with the capacity to hold turreted ships, galleys and cargo boats (1323). The pope himself intercedes on Ascoli's and Venice's behalf, so that they sign a treaty of friendship and mutual assistence in maritime affairs.
The hostilities between Ascoli and Fermo are so frequent and habitual to be considered by the inhabitants as a sort of natural calamity. At the first battle taking place near the Tronto, the Ascolans are defeated, but, three years later, they take their revenge. Follows the long war of 1280-1286, ending with the invitation of the pope to the two opponents to placate their spirits and retreat into their own lands.
During this period Ascoli gives birth to three of the most illustrious men in its history: Girolamo Masio di Lisciano, the future pope Nicolò IV; Francesco Stabili, known as Cecco d'Ascoli, the most famous academic, astrologist and doctor in Bologna, burnt alive by the Inquisition in Florence (1327); Domenico Savi, known as Meco del Sacco, also inquisited and condemned to the stake, accused of heresy. The latters, Cecco d'Ascoli and Meco del Sacco represent the most dramatic expression of the revolt against the excessive secularization and politicization of Church. With the beginning of 1300 Ascoli comes to know a good twenty years of peace, interrupted in 1323, when its inhabitants, fearing something gloomy against Castrum Truentinum in the papal seat of Avignone, invade the whole territory of Fermo, entering deeply into the enemy walls and committing horrible plundering and excessive blood-spilling.
In 1348 the Ascolans entrust the command of their troops to the Lord of Rimini, Galeotto Malatesta, who, even though he has to suffer some initial losses like the Fortress of Porto d'Ascoli and the consequent hanging of fourteen of his men, is able, later on, to beat the people of Fermo heavily at San Severino, putting them in escape and forcing them to leave their weapons and luggage on the fields. The high priced victory allows Malatesta to gain the highest decisive powers. He has the strongholds of the city reinforced, and, after taking in one of his faithful garrisons, confines into oblivion lots of the nobles who had brought him to Ascoli. And more, he tries to thwart the ancient municipal statute with the aim of becoming the absolute and undisputed lord of the city. And he would certainly have succeeded if the people hadn't stopped for the moment the war against Fermo, made wiser by the cruelty of the despot, who had four dynasts pulled by horse's tail through the streets of the city and then quartered.
A popular insurrection at the words death to the tyrant drives out Malatesta and his group. While fleeing, they don't miss the opportunity to burn and plunder the castles in the surrounding countryside. The Ascolans regain their republic, but they must undergo, in the following century, the oppressions of the count Francesco Sforza. Upon election by pope as the vicar of Marca, he makes his seat in Ascoli and out of fear of a cospiracy fills the city with gallows. Antonio Bentivoglio, who tries to ambush Marca, is reserved an exceptional torture. Once captured, he is put in prison in Fermo, then he is tortured a long time and later on encapsuled in a fresh cow's skin and then buried alive upright. He is given bread and water daily until the gangrene does not completely devour him in the skin which has become putried with time.
Notwithstanding such tortures, easily found in a time where in other places there are the Borgias, Ascoli of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries is a fervid working place of private and public works. Money changes quickly and strongly. The city has better commercial and political relations with Venice, Florence, Rome, Genoa, Naples. It lives fully the cultural, humanistic, Renaissance revival. Historical are the urbanistic works carried out.
The Ascolans manage to free themselves from the Sforzas, thanks to the Guelphes headed by the Dal Montes, Sgariglias and Saladinis, who in turn are helped by more than a hundred mountaineers from Luco di Acquasanta, captained by Vanne Ciucci. The republican system is restored in 1482, but the city must pay out 3000 scudi in annual taxes to pope Sisto IV for the recognition of libertas ecclesiastica, which guarantees the republican freedom, given safe the pontificial supremacy and the dipendence on the Sacred Mother Church.
In the meantime, the city becomes pray of internal factions. Guelphes against Ghibellines, Ghibellines against Guelphes, the ones and the others, in their own rights, against other internal factions and sub-factions.
The Guiderocchis, typical representatives of a certain local nobility interested only in their own profits, excel. This family keeps on acquiring a despotic power on the republic, doted with two organisms: the Council of Nobles or Senate and the Council of People.
The tyrannical power of Astolfo Guiderocchi comes to such a point as not to accept the peace the Senate agrees upon with Fermo, but a popular uprising, captained by Guelphes ex-Ghibellines, to words death to the tyrant, long live the population, takes by force and gives fire to the Palace of the Guiderocchis, compelling them into exile. Furious battles between armed bands, internal and external instigators, follow, which deteriorate the free liberal institutions. And the times are so sorrowful that the Ascolans think it is better to return under the protective wings of the pope to avoid worse problems.
In 1502 Alessandro VI sends the Roman governor Alberini into the city, but things do not change. The conspirations, on the contrary, become thicker and bring about the famous fire of the Palazzo dei Capitani and its precious archives (1535).
In this way the Guiderocchis are followed by the Malaspinas, who become supreme lords and the city lives once again its dark period, not very dissimilar, on the other hand, to those of many other much more illustrious Italian lordships.
Paolo III sends the commissioner Angelini to Ascoli to put an end to the internal wars. He has Malatesta Fortress and Porta Maggiore enlarged and fortified, following the plan of a Florentine Sangallo. The material and moral anarchy is such that, if in one part there is the birth of a religious reform for a renewal of the church, on the other part emerges a reactionary jesuitism. During these times betrayal is the game of the day. Armies, made up of robbers and brigands, wander around without pay and without guide. They make of war their career and respond to the reaction of population with rapes, sackings, ruins and fires.
The beautiful wife of Cola dell'Amatrice, the famous artist that has left many valuable works of art in Ascoli, gives a sublime example of married fidelity, paying for it with her life. Chased by soldiers inebriated with her beauty, not seeing any other way to save her honour and her husband's, she throws herself down from a tall precipice, where the river Chiaro flows into the river Tronto.
Upon the death of the powerful Giulio II, thirteen Ascolans plot against the deputy legate, Governor Sisto Vezio. He finds refuge in the Cathedral, but he is discovered here and his throat is cut (1555). There is no limit whatsoever to the massacres and profanation. Banditism reigns supreme and finds proselytes everywhere. Exiled nobility, common criminals, persecuted citizens search for impunity or refuge in the woodlands. Brigands and rebels find in cruelty not only the sole system of survival, but also the revenge for everyone of their unbearable desire for vengeance.
The papal legate Rocca himself, after executing and quartering the bandits, nine at a time, institutes a strange custom. Whoever can kill a bandit, even if he himself is a bandit. As well, big prizes in nature or money are conceded to whoever hunts them down. Ascoli comes to know, in this way, one of the most sorrowful and dismal periods of its history.
In order to punish Ascoli, Pio IV removes the jurisdiction of some castles Gregorio XIII will restore (1573). The pope desires, under the direction of Sangallo, that a fortress, Fortress Pia, be built against the internal and external enemies with the pure aim of cultivating the hope of a quick recovery of ancient communal liberties, by now become a legend.
The rising to the throne of Sisto V from Montalto Marche restores a little order in the government and the administration of Ascoli. The strong and cruel pope sends into the city the governor Landriani, who has eighty brigands captured and hung. The Cardinal Sangiorgi enlists in an army 572 of them and sends them to Hungary to fight against the Turks with great hopes (1592).
At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the city comes to live a deep peace and becomes the chief city of a zone which is exclusively agricultural, once exhausted all the industrial, political and commercial movements of the previous centuries.
Those times give birth to a new social figure, the man of the people, who is destined to have a long life. He finds work, housing and food in the palace of the master that can be more or less rich. He lives on the last floor, or in the attic, whilst his master occupies the main floor of the building. The man of the people does all the work that master needs, cultivates the vegetable gardens or the flower ones of the patrician house, does the domestic works, removes sand, stones or woods from the banks of the river Tronto, according to the master's necessities. He transports goods, wares and does everything that still nowadays in the local dialect is called le mmasciate.
Amongst the various commercial activities, the manifacturing of silk thread involving almost all the families continues, allowing them to live day by day.
The town chronicles of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries record only families competitions, weddings and feasts, miracles, sporadic and treacherous acts on the part of brigands and robbers. Ascoli lives, at the most, a tranquil life, encircled by the two fortresses that the lords and popes have built around it: Pia Fortress and Porta Maggiore Fortress, where there is a small garrison of Corsicans, faithful papal guards before the arrival of the Swiss guards.
Many local nobles, who could not endure for long the long peace, preferring the family war-like traditions, put themselves in Venice's, Austria's, France's and Spain's pay. During this period, the city doesn't undergo any threats or wars of any type, but only the passage of some foreign troops. Life flows along without any particular turbolence. The examples of Venice, Florence, promoters of decentralized Agrarian Academies bring about some agricultural progress in the fertile Valley of the Tronto, as also the city gets echo of the French Illuminist movement. With the Revolution of 1789 Ascoli undergoes the invasion of foreign armies as do many other Italian cities.
With the outbreak of riots in 1797 in Rome, the General Council decrees on the 28th February 1798 to democratize the local government, giving equal parts of the decisive powers to nobility, scholars, merchants, farmers and instituting the civil guards.
Once Napoleon leaves Italy, European monarchies have fair play and make their senses of solidarity go off in order to repress the various republics, arisen here and there. In Ascoli the uprising against the revolution is general and the doings of the brigands are added to reinforce it. Well known is Giuseppe Costantini, called Sciabolone, who manages to captain some insurrectional bands to which are added those headed by De Donatis, a strong figure of rebel priest, who becomes the gangs' chaplain later. These formations, after an ambush made on the Jacobin soldiers at Ponte d'Arli, enter Ascoli on 23rd January 1799. Then skirmishes and tumults follow and spread up to the gorges of the high Tronto with a still favourable outcome for the republic. On 12th of June, however, Sciabolone, notwithstanding his great courage, must escape from the city, followed by the French General Monnier, who, as a revenge, allows the city be plundered and sacked by his men. An indescrible confusion follows, a dreadful anarchy with repentine passages of men and chiefs from one part to another. The constitution of a Provisional Government in Ascoli is not enough to stop the disorder. Insurrectional bands arise everywhere and make of robbing their way of life.
Napoleon makes Fermo, Camerino and Ascoli into a unique Province, called Department of Tronto (1808). The city so becomes the most southern part of the Kingdom of Italy, subjected to Fermo.
With the downfall of Napoleon I, municipal authorities and population give way to grand demonstrations of jubilation for the restoration of the papal government. This time there are no revenges, or spilling of blood, but only institutional changes, the Napoleonic rights are substituted with canonic or Roman rights, the national guard substituted with the provincial guard, the old guard substituted by new men.
The proclamation of the Roman Republic (1848) finds in Ascoli strong sympathy and adherences. The deputies Vecchi and Tranquilli are sent to Rome for the Constituent Assembly of the Free Cities of Italy. Garibaldi in his trip to Rome passes by the town and rouses huge enthusiasmes amongst population. He publically embraces Sciabolone and makes him a gift of his sword.
With the fall of Rome, there follows the arrival, as an extraordinary commissioner, of Felice Orsini who will become famous later for the criminal attempt on Napoleone III's life. The Papists do not rage immediately upon their adversaries, also because Austria and France, who had harshly criticized the Roman Republic, are eager to be liberal. The revenges arrive later. A careful censure scans opinions and actions of every person. Notwithstanding this, Ascoli follows with passion all the Italian uprisings that lead to indipendence and freedom. About eighty volunteers fight at San Martino (1859).
With the Unity of Italy (1860) Ascoli is restored its ancient dignity of chief town that the Kingdom of Italy had deprived it. So it becomes the chief town of a new and bigger province. The rest of its history is part of the history of Italy.
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