Frigento

Frigento stands at 911 metres on the top of a broad hill in central Irpinia, and from up there it looks in every direction: the Ufita valley to the north, the Fredane basin to the south, the Ansanto valley to the east and the Calore basin to the west. The name comes from Frequentum or Afrigentum, which the Rationes decimarum of Campania trace back to the Latin phrase a populi frequentia, that is to a concourse of people; and the municipal coat of arms sets three mountains beneath the initials F.R.C., Frequentum Romana Civitatis. People, in fact, have always been here: among the many palaeolithic finds in flint and in «Frigento stone» there is also a fossil human bone, found on the hill by professor Salvatore Forgione and referred to the morphotype of Homo erectus, datable between three hundred and fifty thousand and one hundred and thirty thousand years ago.

A doubtful tradition holds that in 441, by the will of pope Leo the First, Frigento became the seat of bishop Marciano, who had chosen this place as a hermitage. Under the Lombards the town was a strategic defensive post of the duchy of Benevento, until in 988 an earthquake destroyed it. Slowly rebuilt, it remained for centuries under the feudal lords of nearby Gesualdo, then passed to the Filangieri and to the Caracciolo of Avellino. The bishop's seat remained the religious and economic reference of the community until its definitive suppression, in 1818. The mother church of Santa Maria Assunta stands on the crown of the hill, has paleochristian origins and was built on the ruins of a pagan temple; destroyed by the earthquake of 1732, it was rebuilt in 1760, and it keeps the relic of the skull of saint Marciano, which is shown to the faithful only twice a year. In the church dedicated to the saint, attested as early as 754, digs in the adjoining gardens have found the burials of free Lombard men, with weapons among their grave goods. The earthquake of 1980, finally, in the comune of Frigento alone left 4 dead, 80 injured and 663 homeless.