Summonte

Summonte means sub monte, under the mountain, and the mountain is the Partenio, on whose eastern slopes the village stands at over seven hundred metres. The first document concerning it, however, calls it something else: it is a donation of 769 by which a Lombard patrician named Leo gave some curtes to the abbey of Montecassino, and there the place is recorded as Transmonte, that is beyond the mountain — because the deed was drawn up in Benevento, and from Benevento this slope is on the other side. The name of a village, in short, depends on where the writer is standing. From another document of the territory, a lease of 1037, it appears that mulberry was grown here to raise silkworms: it is held to be the oldest Italian document on silk rearing.

The most singular thing, though, is the tower. The Lombards found here a small fortress that defended ancient Abellinum along the road to the Caudine Valley, adapted it to themselves — they liked to live apart from the local population — and strengthened it by building a tower with a circular base: something they did nowhere else in the duchy of Benevento, where their towers were square. The tower could not be entered from the ground: there was a single opening, raised above ground level, reached only by ropes or movable ladders; inside, two floors divided by wooden ceilings, joined by steps cut into the thickness of the wall. In 1980 an infrared aerial photogrammetric survey gave back the plan of the castle that stood around it. And the communal arms, with their three hills, carry above them two letters, S and E: they are the first and the last of the name.