San Benedetto Ullano

San Benedetto Ullano — Shën Benedhiti in Arbëresh — lies at the foot of the Sant'Elia hill, on the eastern flank of the Catena Paolana, in a position commanding the Crati valley. The name comes from a Benedictine monastery that the Norman dukes of Montalto founded here in the last decades of the twelfth century, when the village was their fief; the second part, Ullano, probably refers to an ancient settlement that stood nearby, from the Latin Aulanium. In the second half of the fourteen hundreds the borgo was repopulated by Albanian refugees, and from then on it grew. It was for a long time the chief Albanian community of Calabria and is among the Arbëresh settlements nearest to Cosenza; in the Risorgimento it was one of the most active centres of insurrectionary propaganda and action in the region, and many of its people took part in the Cosenza risings of 1844 and of 1848. But what made it a cultural capital is something else: in 1732 the Italo-Albanian college, called the Corsini college, was established here, where the clergy of the Greek-Catholic rite were trained. The college stayed here until 1860, when it was moved to San Demetrio Corone.

The village still carries the marks of that double world. The old centre is made of eighteenth-century doorways with coats of arms and of the arches and archways typical of the gjitonie, the small neighbourhoods around which Arbëresh villages are organised. In the church of the Madre del Buon Consiglio, of the first decades of the seventeen hundreds, there is the chapel of the Rodotà dei Coronei family, and there the double belonging can be seen at a glance: the altar balustrade is clearly Latin, the square altar surmounted by four columns is typically Byzantine, and beside them stand a cinerary urn of the Roman imperial age and some inscriptions. On the morning of Palm Sunday there are processions for the resurrection of Lazarus, singing the Kalimere; of the ancient Holy Week rites what remains is the procession of the Açiomeri, on the Thursday and the Friday. The feast of the Madre del Buon Consiglio, on the first Sunday of May, is tied to the exodus of the Albanians to Calabria. And in the hamlets of Marri and Piano dei Rossi Albanian is still spoken.