History Of Monte San Savino in Tuscany Italy
Monte San Savino was raised to a Principality and was given to Mattias De’ Medici, governor of Siena. who held it until 1667? He was succeeded, as ruler of the Principality of Monte San Savino, by the Grand-duchess Vittoria della Rovere of Urbino, wife of Ferdinando. She held the title until 1691, the year of her death.
A period of independence followed; but, inevitably, Monte San Savino shared the destiny of the whole region and was absorbed by the Grand Duchy of Tuscany in 1747, ending the feudal period.
In those two centuries the city’s appearance did not change; but its inhabitants has enjoyed two exceptional experiences: there had been a rich artistic life on the one hand and a complex development of banks and commerce on the other. One local son, Andrea Sansovino, had gone beyond the borders of the little territory and long before his death in 1529, had become a leading figure in Italian art. After Andrea, sculptor and architect, Monte San Savino produced at least four important painters: Niccolò Soggi (a pupil of Perugino), Stefano Veltroni and Orazio Porta (of the school of Vasari), Ulisse Giocchi (an eclectic, baroque artist), as well as the goldsmith and sculptor Accursio Baldi. No other village of the Val di Chiana, except Cortona, can boast such artistic vitality.
The town’s commercial development began in the mid-l7th century thanks to a Jewish community, which settled in the village, creating a synagogue, a ghetto, and a cemetery. For almost two centuries this community controlled all trade in cloth, silver, wool, not only in the valley but also as far afield as Cortona.
During the anti-French uprisings known as the movement in Arezzo in 1799, almost all the Jewish merchants to whom the French had granted civil liberties were forced to emigrate. With them went the poet Salomone Florentine, then the administrator of the community. In 1802 the French returned, incorporating Tuscany into French territory, and in twelve years, through drastic methods, they established various innovations. As elsewhere they instituted the Bureau of Records, the Bureau of Mortgages, and the Registry.
The monasteries were suppressed, and so in 1810 the Augustinian, Camaldolese, and Franciscan monks had to leave the town, as did the Poor Clares.
Meanwhile the idea of national unity was beginning to ripen also in Monte San Savino, and several Savinesi took an active part in the Risorgimento. Norberto Coradeschi fought in the war of Independence in 1848 and with Garibaldi until 1866, and Ferdinando Zanetti, a local surgeon and patriot, operated on Garibaldi after he was wounded at Aspromonte. In 1859 the Grand Duke left Tuscany, and the following year, after plebiscites, the whole region became part of the Kingdom of Italy.
During the past century the town again made a considerable contribution to Italian culture, producing the poet and critic Giulio Salvadori, one of the first professors at the Catholic University of Milan (a movement to have him beatified is now in progress) and the scientist Giuseppe Sanarelli, discoverer of the vaccine against yellow fever. The archaeologist G.F. Gamurrini, the first to carry out systematic studies of Etruscan civilisation, is considered a Savinese by adoption.
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