Aristocratic families

30-10-2017 | Style & Culture

Written by: Giancarlo Roversi

Aristocratic families in front of the cathedral

Directly opposite the block that would first become the Archbishop's Seminary and then the Hotel Baglioni, the cathedral was built, the main center of Catholic devotion and liturgy, the seat of the bishop and canons, and the church where all the city's Christians were baptized. The baptistery, dedicated to St. John the Baptist, in fact, occupied a stretch of road directly in front of the cathedral's façade, as in many cities, where this structure, indispensable to Christian life, still exists: in Parma, Florence, and Pistoia. The cathedral, moreover, was a small church, which in 1141 was destroyed by fire and immediately rebuilt in new Romanesque forms.

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Around the cathedral were the homes of some of the families closest to the Chapter, to the bishops who succeeded one another on the Bolognese chair, but also families who do not appear close to the civil power exercised by the ecclesiastical hierarchy. We know, in fact, that both the parishes of San Pietro and Sant'Andrea dei Piatesi, next to and in front of the cathedral respectively, were home to the Ariosti, Piatesi, and Carbonesi families, at least in the 12th century if not earlier. The former often occupied positions in the Chapter and shared the power that the structure of the Bolognese Church held, and also provided the city with a bishop. As the Middle Ages progressed, in fact, we saw important city families, often of Comitato origin, but also of frank urban birth, influence the choices of the ecclesiastical hierarchy with their social and economic power.

On the other hand, it must be considered that bishops had not only a spiritual task, but that in the first Christian centuries, after the decline and inactivity of state magistrates, they also assumed secular tasks, guiding the population, encouraging the construction, maintenance, and management of public structures, such as walls, and organizing political representation.

We do not know the precise political location of other families who took up residence in the block, but thanks to the tax surveys, issued at the end of the 13th century by the Municipality of Bologna, we know that the Perticoni and Gabriozzi (consorts of the da Castello family), the Galluzzi, the Bazaleri, the Azzoguidi and the Oseletti families were settled towards Via Indipendenza. In the westernmost part, towards the imperial fortress, the da Castello and the Malavolti families had their houses, derived from the Ubaldini, nobles of the mountain towards the borders with Fiorentino.

At their origins, the da Castello family was not noble, but rather linked to the University: they had a famous jurist, Alberto, who in the mid-12th century called his colleague Piacentino to teach in Bologna. They probably took their name from having taken up residence in the area of the imperial castle, at the top of the embankment on Via Porta di Castello. The Gabriozzi and Perticoni families were linked to them by kinship and by pacts of loyalty and mutual aid, but they soon disappeared, not reaching the end of the Middle Ages, unlike the da Castello family, who indeed prospered and occupied pre-eminent places in the city aristocracy, among other things in the Senate, transforming their name into Castelli. In truth, in the first municipal period it was rather the Perticoni who devoted themselves to political activity: we know of a Guido Perticoni consul of the municipality in 1174 and 1175 and a Rolando di Arduino in 1178.

A branch of the Galluzzi family was based on this block, but everyone knows that their houses with towers were located in Corte Galluzzi, that is, always within the oldest city, enclosed by selenite walls, near the southeastern corner.

The Galluzzis also participated in the institutions of the consular aristocratic commune, with a Rolando by Pietro de Henrico who was consul in 1174.

The Azzoguidi also owned a tall tower, the one also called Altabella, a true tower built to defend the consortium: it had a square plan and was certainly taller than today, even though it measures a considerable height of 61 metres.

It is also the only Bolognese tower that is almost perfectly straight and from this particular solidity it took its name.

The Azzoguidi appear to have always been Guelph and ardent partisans of the Pepoli, and as such participated in municipal political life between the 13th and 14th centuries. But let us not forget, with the factional struggles now over, that Baldassarre Azzoguidi was the first Bolognese printer in the second half of the fifteenth century. With their houses that seemed to clamp the bishop's palace, between Via Altabella and St. Peter's Square, they surrounded the cathedral.

An Oseletti tower can still be seen on Strada Maggiore overlooking the nearby Palazzo Sanguinetti, but this family had another tower on Via Altabella, which no longer exists today but whose base was discovered in large plaster parallelepipeds in 1817. Geremei, that is, Guelphs, appear to have been heated since an Auxilittus was consul in 1156, again with his descendant Uguzzo Oseletti who held this office in 1186 and also in the 13th century, when some members of the family were also banished as lambertazzo.

But the family was already dying out and disappeared from the city's social landscape in the 14th century. The Carbonesi polarized their presence in the city into two specific areas, the one where they also had the family chapel, near Porta Procola, on the corner between Via D'Azeglio and Via Carbonesi, and the one in front of the cathedral, where they owned a tower that was still clearly visible when Filippo de’ Gnudi drew up his scenographic plan of the city in 1702.

The remains of the tower resurfaced in 1872 by lowering the Seminary portico, showing that the tower was 6.46 meters wide on each side and had a wall thickness of about 2 meters. That is, this too was to be a tower more for defense than for habitation, useful to the consortium when some enemy attack forced defense or when a sortie against the enemies themselves was planned from the safe refuge of its walls. This family also appears early in the consular organization of the municipality, with Ospinello Carbonesi, who was among those who led the municipality as consul, both in 1173 and 1185, imitated by Maso in 1186 and by Dotto di Timone in 1188.

Only in 1156 was Ugo di Ildebrando da Riosto consul: this family owned the other tower that characterized this block, directly opposite the cathedral; and in truth, the da Riostos, or Ariostos, or Ariostis, also had houses next to the main church in Bologna and were among those families who participated most in the institutional life of the Bolognese Church. Gerardo Ariosti was in fact bishop of Bologna between 1198 and 1213, after having been part of the Chapter. But other Ariosti devoted themselves to trade and credit, holding elected positions within the trade guilds, such as Alberghetto, consul of merchants and judge in 1212 and 1214, or political positions in the municipality, such as Rainerio, consul of justice in 1220 and belonging to the curia and council in 1219. Their tower, however, which stood approximately at the fourth arch of the elegant portico of the Seminary, had a rectangular base, measuring 5.95 by 6.77 meters, but above all it had walls at the base only 1.32-1.38 meters thick: it can therefore be considered that it had not only a defensive function but also a residential one, connected to nearby houses, and was belonging only to the family and not to a large consortium.

The Malavolti are interesting, on the contrary, because they never had relations with the Municipality of Bologna, they never participated in the city's elected magistrates, they did not want - we would say today – to integrate into the municipal political form. Deriving from an ancient noble and feudal family of the county between Bologna and Florence, the Ubaldini, together with the lords of Loiano, probably maintained greater ties with the aristocracy of the territory, with their landed possessions in the mountains, with the seigneurial and Ghibelline political form.

There were also two churches linked to the memory of the imperial castle and not far from the da Castello homes, both on Via Porta di Castello and at the top of the hill: San Luca, still present in the Vatican Plan, and Santa Maria di Castello, in the Malavolti homes, but soon disappeared from the urban landscape.

Overlooking the walls

When Roman civilization, exhausted by the passage of time, gave in to the innovations that were advancing and transforming it-that is, when Italy's borders were not enough to contain the invasions and occupations of barbarian peoples and they began to become part of the human and social landscape of the peninsula-the cities sought to defend, on small islands surrounded by walls, what had been built over centuries of civilization.

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