San Sossio Baronia

Everything here begins with water. In the early Middle Ages this was the district of springs inside the possessions of the lords of Trevico, and the shepherds came down with their flocks to water them where today there are three caves dug into the clay, one smaller in the middle: the shape of the whole is that of a nativity, and they are called the caves of San Giuseppe, of the Madonna and of the Child; the place is known as the Acqua della Madonna. The name of the village, on the other hand, comes from a refusal. They tell that a donkey carrying the relics of San Sossio, martyr, meant for a nearby village, on reaching the spot now called Sella Coppola took the road that went down to the few houses at the bottom of the valley, and there was no way of making it change direction. They cried miracle: the relics stayed in the little church of the Annunziata, and the village was given the name of the saint. It appears in the Catalogus Baronum of 1269 with the rank of villa, and later, having grown, with that of casale; and in the Rationes Decimarum the Clerici S. Sossi, in the years around 1308, owed the bishop of Trevico an annual tax of one tarì and twelve and a half grana, raised later, when the village grew, to two tarì and five grana. A village whose existence is proved by a church tax, and whose growth is proved by the tax going up.

In 1454 San Sossio was raised to the rank of «terra» and with that title obtained its own administrative autonomy, while still remaining tied to the other villages of the fief of Trevico; the tie lasted until 1515, when Elvira, daughter of the Gran Capitán Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba, sold the city of Vico and the lands of San Sossio and Zungoli to Francesco Loffredo, protonotary of the kingdom. The Loffredo held it until the end of feudalism. But the people here always kept a certain autonomy, and about that they tell a story: around the fifteen hundreds a feudatory drank at the spring, praised how cool and clear it was, and said he would put a tax on it; an old woman answered him that the water was cool, Excellency, but that their heads were hot — and the little lord thought better of applying it. Perhaps it is from that, the sources say, that the arms of the comune come: three jets of water springing from the top of a hill, under three five-pointed stars. In 1612 Ferdinando Loffredo gave the most abundant spring the dignified fountain it still has, with his family arms and the image of the patron in relief, and an inscription that stops the passer-by: thirsty traveller, beware of hurrying away, here a conduit of ice-cold water runs sweetly. The «Baronia» in the name is recent: it was added by royal decree on the third of April 1913, and it says that the village belonged to the barony of Vico. The ground here shakes: on the twenty-third of July 1930 an earthquake killed forty-two people of San Sossio and brought down fifty houses, and others came back in the course of the twentieth century.