Fragneto Monforte

The name comes from a Lombard family: the fara of Gnito, that is the group of the warrior Gnito, who after the conquest of Benevento settled here and made of it a village fortified with walls and towers. Some also derive it from the Latin farneus, a kind of oak, with the suffix that means a wood: the oak wood. Monforte, on the other hand, comes from Bartolomeo da Monteforte, one of the first sub-feudatories, and serves to tell the town from neighbouring Fragneto l'Abate. But the thing that has lasted longest here was brought by others. At the end of the ninth century, after the Byzantines were driven out of Benevento, some groups settled at Fragneto: they were merchants and skilled craftsmen, and they made the borgo flourish. With them came the cult of saint Nicholas of Myra and, together with it, a custom: the rich gave quantities of food to a Magister, who redistributed them to the poorest. That custom is still the shape of the feast of San Nicola — the gathering and the distribution of the offerings — and it is kept by a figure the town calls the Mastro di Festa, the master of the feast.

The ducal palace goes back to about the year one thousand, and the Lombards called it Castello Nostro, our castle. In 1138 it was sacked and burned by Roger II; the earthquake of 1456 brought much of it down along with the borgo, and each time it was rebuilt. In 1528 the fief was granted to the viceroy's lieutenant Ferrante Montalto, and the Montalto held it with the title of dukes until the end of feudality: the palace still belongs to their heirs. Outside the town, near the church of Santa Maria in Principio, there is a stone they call the Madonna's stone, because they say the Virgin knelt there and left the prints of her feet and her knees. And there is a folk group, born in 1970, which takes its name from the takkare, the sticks of seasoned olive wood that used to beat the rhythm of an old dance.