A hill of chalky rocks, covered with low vegetation and a source with abundant water at {tip title="Valle del Miscano" content="its position in the Campania Appenine, located between the province of Avellino and Benevento with an offshoot in Foggia, the valley watered by the river Miscano has been strategic in the connections between the Tyrrhenian see and the Adriatic, at the turn of Campania and Apulia, since the most ancient times. 

Crossed by humans and flocks along the tratturo (mountain grassy paths) Pescasseroli-Candela and since the Roman Empire of Via Herculea, which linked the Samnium and Lucania, and from via Traiana, between Benevento and Brindisi, which then became part of the Via Francigena, the valley keeps archeological testimonies of different eras and populations: from the flints worked since the Paleolithic to the remains of Neolithic handicrafts at La Sfarza, close to Ariano Irpino, to the Samnite structures close to Casalbore, up to the remains of the Romans habitation of Aequum Tuticum." class="primary"}La Starza{/tip}.

This was the ideal place to stop, in the , along the way which was joining the Tyrrhenian sea and the Adriatic. Humans who knew and spent time there during the Paleolithic times left important traces on top of many others, when that place stopped being a crossing point in order to welcome the most ancient village of the Campania in the VI millennium b.C, so in the middle of Neolithic age.

Other hamlets appeared when the first Italian populations settled between those mountains. Looking for new lands, few centuries later, a big youth group arrived in the close Samnium, led there by a “ver sacrum” (Sacred Spring). A wolf showed them the way. The name hirpus in Oscan language was taken from the Irpinia people. In that vast area which was extending between the Sabato rivers, Ufita and Ofanto, they founded Maloenton, Aeclanum, Romulea, Compsa, Aletrium, Aquilonia, Lacedonia and right on the banks of the Sabato, Abellinum. There also, the Irpinia tribes, federated in the Lega Sannitica, joined the war against the Romans. Later, when Hannibal asked for their support during the Second Punic War, they divided themselves between the aristocratic faithful to the Roman allegiance and the democratic in favor of the Carthaginian mercenary captain. Still divided in two fronts, they fought during they Social War. In the 87 b.C. they obtained the roman citizenship by Mario, but after the subsequent civil war between Marius and Silo, following the victory of this latter, were deprived of any kind of benefit and autonomy and especially of their lands which were given to Roman Citizens. During the Imperial age, Irpinia has been administratively separated from the Samnium, and has been included in the Regio II Apulia and Calabria, under Compsa military control.

In the VI century a.D, with the arrival of the Lombards, the lands of Irpina started being part of the Duchy of Benevento. With the beginning of the Principality of Salerno in the 849 and the division of the Longobardia minor, the lands of Irpinia went through the hands of the new state. The full reunification of the lands of the ancient Irpinia people happened in the XI century under the Normans, whose settlement in the south of Italy started from the County of Ariano, famous for the homonym Assisi.

During the Angevin times, in the XIII century, the Irpinia was taken away from the control of Salerno and subsequently, with the administrative reorganization of the Kingdom of Naples wanted by Charles of Anjou and laid by the Treaty of Alife on 5th October 1273, it has been included in the new Justiciarate denominated Principality Ultra, which survived in the Kingdom of Naples and then in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies until 1806. It was then that Joseph Bonaparte abolished the justiciarate and reformed the administrative organisation of the kingdom by establishing the provinces. With the birth of the Province of the Principality Ultra, the county changed from Montusco to Avellino, which gave the name to the province with the Italian unification in 1860.

Valley of Miscano

Due to its position in the Campania Appenine, located between the province of Avellino and Benevento with an offshoot in Foggia, the valley watered by the river Miscano has been strategic in the connections between the Tyrrhenian see and the Adriatic, at the turn of Campania and Apulia, since the most ancient times.  Crossed by humans and flocks along the tratturo (mountain grassy paths) Pescasseroli-Candela and since the Roman Empire of Via Herculea, which linked the Samnium and Lucania, and from via Traiana, between Benevento and Brindisi, which then became part of the Via Francigena, the valley keeps archeological testimonies of different eras and populations: from the flints worked since the Paleolithic to the remains of Neolithic handicrafts at La Sfarza, close to Ariano Irpino, to the Samnite structures close to Casalbore, up to the remains of the Romans habitation of AequumTuticum.

 

Ver sacrum

The “Sacred Spring” or “ver sacrum” was a ritual practiced by the Italic peoples since the Iron Age and linked to the migratory movements, which led to the creation of new colonies. In case of famine and wars and when an excessive increase of peoples was noticeable, especially among the Sabines, a vow was made to the god Mars: sacrificing all the generation of offspring born between 1st of March and 30th of April of the following year. If the animals were actually sacrificed, children instead were grown up as people sacred to gods and then, once they had reached the age of majority, they had to leave the original community in order to found new colonies. An animal totem was showing them the way towards the new land and the place to stop and every new tribe was adopting it as their own sacred animal.

This is how the Sabines were differenciated from people of Umbria, in order to create the community of the Piceni, the Samnites, who had the torus as a wild totem, and the Irpini people, led by the wolf.

Lega sannitica

Before openly being in conflict with the Romans, around the V century b.C., the Samnites were protected by a state system reunited in confederation. To the Lega Sannitica four other peoples ( touti in Oscan language) adhered to it:  Pentri, Carricini, Caudini and Irpini, then joined by the Frentani who were the first to be submitted to the Romans. Their “touto”, the community ,was governed by a council and a meddixtuticus (meddìs tu ), a magistrate elected democratically, who was in charge for two years with the possibility of different re-elections and he was co-operated by other administrators with specific roles. The meddix had government responsibilties, but also military and religious ones. In the Lega, whose main finality was the military unity of the Samnites in order to combat the progressive roman expansion in their lands, was led by a council formed by meddix of the different “touti”, which was reunited rotating in the counties of the “touti” themselves when they had to decide on military actions. In case of war, the Lega was nominating a commander choosing between the meddix.  The Lega has been active during the whole long Samnite Wars time against Rome, while its survival in the III century has not been confirmed, when the Samnites have been divided supporting Hannibal against Rome.

Samnite Wars

(photos of the landscape of Lacedonia, the ancient Aquilonia). In the middle of the expansionistic phase, the Romans, focused against the Etruscans, started a conflict three times with the Samnites in the South between the IV and the III century b.C. The first battle was the result of the occupation of Capua and Cumae from the Samnite part in 343 b.C. The inhabitants of Capua asked and obtained the intervention of Rome. It was a relatively short war, which lasted two years due to the control of Campania. The war ended when the Samnites renounced to Campania.

After having founded a new colony in the river Liris, the Romans occupied Naples in 326, blocking the Samnite expansion to the sea. The Samnites went to war, trusting their perfect military preparation and arms unknown to the enemies: the javelins for example. It was a bloody confrontation, in which the Samnites won the victory of the Caudine Forks. Then, after few years of truce, during which Rome was allied with different peoples, boundaries of the enemies, and the Appian way was built, which was guarantying support and supplies to the Romans, started to fight again from 316 until 304, when the Samnites asked for peace.

The third war started again in 298 b.C, after the Samnites had built an alliance with the Etruscans, the Umbrians and the Senones. There were many battles with alternating results, but the battle of Aquilonia (293) in the Samnium was decisive. The war finally ended in 290, the Samnites surrendered and stipulated with Rome an agreement of peace and alliance.

Second Punic War

After the victory of Canne in 216 b.C., Hannibal went to the South with his army in order to occupy new territories and to conquer the italic peoples. He succeeded also with the Samnites who were divided: the Carricini, the Caudines and the Hirpini went on his side, whereas the Pentri kept their loyalty to Rome.

Social War

From 91 to 88 b.C. the Roman Republic was against the Italic peoples who were their allies and were claiming the roman citizenship. The Samnites take up arms against Rome under the command of Gaius Papius Mutilus, who was leading the riot in the South. The Samnites army and their close allies occupied several cities of Campania, before being defeated by Sulla in 89 b.C. Rome had already won decisive victories and succeeded in dividing the enemy thanks to progressive concessions, but the Samnites kept resisting until the 88, when they finally gave up.  The Roman republic granted the citizenship to the Italic people, and obtained the full control of the Peninsula and began its Romanisation.

Lombards

The Lombards where Germanic people who, from the valley of Elba, since the II century AD. had been the protagonists of a migration eastward first and then to the South, in order to then arrive in Italy in 558, under the guidance of the King Alboin. They founded an independent kingdom with its capital in Pavia, divided in autonomous duchies. The body of laws of the kingdom written in Latin, the Edit of Rothari, and the conversion to Catholicism are the testimonies of the gradual integration with the people of Latine culture. The Lombard kingdom lost its autonomy in 774, after the defeat suffered by the Frankish lead by Charlemagne, who conquered Pavia.

Langobardia minor

The Lombard dominations in the South of Italy, the “Longobardia minor”, kept their autonomy eve after the fall of Pavia. The Duchy of Benevento changed to the Principality of Arechis II. In the following centuries, the Duchy of Salerno and the Duchy of Capua seceded from Benevento and had contrasting relations with the Byzantines, the Holy Roman Empire, the duchies of the coast and the Saracens. Around 1050, the Duchy of Salerno controlled almost all southern Italy before being under the Norman control with Robert Guiscard.

Normans

With Viking origins, sailors, originally from Norway or Denmark, they expanded across Northern Europe, before beginning the emigration southwards, initially occupying the region which they then named Normandy, to then move to England, in the rest of France and in the South of Italy, in Apulia, where they arrived in 1017.

A group of Normans headed by Gilbert Buatère settled in Ariano, in Irpinia, taking the control of the county of Longobardia who was recognised by the emperor of Francophony Henri II in 1022. Ariano was the first centre of the Norman dominion in Italy.

Few years later, in 1030, the leader of the Normans in Italy, Rainulf Drengot, founded the city of Aversa. Robert Guiscard expanded the Norman dominion to southern Italy, from Apulia to Calabria, undermining the Byzantines and including what was remaining of the Lombards dominion, transferring the capital in Salerno in 1077. They would have then conquered part of the centre of Italy, between the Marches and Umbria and the kingdom of Sicily.

Assizes of Ariano

In 1140 and in 1442, the king of Sicily, Roger II, called in Ariano two gatherings of the other feudatories of the kingdom. From these assemblies a body of laws arose which regulated the bureaucracy, the economy and the military regulations of the kingdom.

Charles I of Anjou 

Described as “stupor mundi” (The Wonder of the World), Charles of Anjou, son of Louis VIII the Lion, king of France and Blanche of Castile, was born in Paris 21st of March 1226. Thanks to the marriage with Beatrice in 1246, he became the county of Provence and of Forcalquier, while king Louis IX proclaimed him county of Anjou and Maine giving then origin to Angevin dynasty as a new branch of the Capetians. Crowned as king of Sicily in 1266, two years later, in 1268, after the defeat of the Swedes, he transferred the capital from Palermo to Naples. Continuous wars followed in order to consolidate his control of Italy, until 30th March 1282 when a riot broke out in Sicily: The Vespers which gave the island to the Aragonese. Charles of Anjou kept fighting until his death in Foggia on 7th of January 1285. He was buried in the Dome of Naples.

Justiciarate

During the domination of the Normans, the Swedes and Angevins of the Kingdom of the two Sicilies, the justiciarate was an administrative district led by the executioner. In the kingdom, we could count eleven of them, nine in the peninsula and two in Sicily. The Aragonese replaced them with the provinces led by royal officials.

Giuseppe Bonaparte

The older brother of Napoleon, who assisted him in his ascendency, after the proclamation of the general and emperor. In 1806, he was given the kingdom of Naples, which he governed for two years, before being proclaimed king of Naples.