Montauro

Part of the population of Montauro arrived here under sentence of death. They were people from the districts of Squillace and Soverato who at Capua had betrayed count Roger, and their death sentence was commuted, through the intercession of Saint Bruno, into perpetual servitude under the Carthusian fathers. One hundred and twelve heads of family were brought up here with their children, brothers, brothers-in-law and nephews — two hundred and eighteen people in all, of whom one hundred and sixty-two, between the sound and the wounded, ended in captivity, while the others got away. That is how the village suddenly filled up. In 1098 the same count Roger placed the hamlet under the civil jurisdiction of the charterhouse and the bishop of Squillace ceded to it the ecclesiastical one: a donation later confirmed by several popes and, in 1212 and 1224, by the emperor Frederick II.

The bedrock of this village, though, is Greek. The oldest place name the sources hand down is Mentràbrion, and the explanation lies in the eighth century: after the iconoclast edicts of 726 and 730 and the persecution that followed, the monks of Saint Basil took refuge on the Calabrian coasts, where they built monasteries and helped communities to come into being; in the eleventh century the diocese of Squillace alone counted twelve Basilian monasteries, and at Montauro they still venerate Saint Pantaleon, martyr of Nicomedia. Then came the Turks: from the sixteenth century the raids forced those who lived halfway up the slope to climb onto the hills, and in the village the manor was turned into the church of San Pantaleone while the tower became the bell tower, which indeed still looks like a lookout post. In 1644 and 1645 the Turks sacked and burned Montauro, Stalettì and Gasperina. On 29 July 1497, meanwhile, Goffredo Borgia had had the hamlet confirmed to him along with the whole principality of Squillace. Under the Bourbons the village had about sixteen hundred inhabitants, and three hundred and forty women worked at the looms; the land register of the seventeen forties lists stonecutters, blacksmiths, carpenters, tailors, dyers, tanners, chair-makers, butchers and apothecaries.