Cervinara

The name of this village is a dispute between a stag, a goddess and a wine cellar. The most accepted hypothesis takes it back to the Latin cervus, that is to a land of deer, and a stag indeed stands in the comune's coat of arms, supported by a mount of three peaks and accompanied by a golden comet. A mythological tradition ties it instead to a supposed altar that the Romans would have dedicated to Ceres, goddess of the harvests — Cereris ara — but with no archaeological support it remains a false etymology. A third conjecture proposes a cella vinaria, a place for making and keeping wine. The first documentary attestation is of the twelfth century, in the Chronicon Vulturnense, where one reads «castrum quod dicitur Cerbinaria in Caudetanis». That castrum was monastic property, under the abbey of San Vincenzo al Volturno, until in 837 it was ceded to Sicardo, duke of Benevento; and after the split of 849 between the duchy of Benevento and the principality of Salerno, the stronghold on top of today's frazione Castello, looking over the whole Valle Caudina, became a strategic node for the defence of the capital.

Towards the end of the eleventh century, in the Norman age, Cervinara took shape as a fortified borough with a keep on a rectangular plan and battlements; between 1128 and 1139 it was sacked and devastated by the militias of Roger II, in his fight against his brother-in-law Rainulf. Then came in turn the Della Leonessa, the Carafa, the Caracciolo, and from the sixteenth century the people came down from the original centre, almost entirely abandoned, to the hamlets of the valley, until they numbered about two thousand five hundred. In the Risorgimento the village took part in the movements of 1820 and of 1848, when the carbonari decided to start precisely from here to march on Naples and set up a Republic there; but the ferment never convinced the majority, and on the twenty-ninth and thirtieth of November 1860 Cervinara rose on the Bourbon side against the Piedmontese government — and the mountains above the village became the refuge of the bands of Cipriano and Giona La Gala. The mountain came down once more, and recently: on 16 December 1999, after intense rains, a mudslide struck the frazioni of Ioffredo and Castello, causing five deaths and destroying or damaging many buildings.