Comiziano

The village was called Comignano, or Cumignano, and in 1909 a royal decree changed its name to Comiziano — but in dialect people go on saying Cumignano. Where the older name came from is argued over: from a kind of olive the Romans called cominia, in which case the place would be the ground where those olives grew; from the knights of Malta, the comites, who are said to have gathered here coming from nearby Cicciano; or, and this is the likeliest, from the gens Cominia, a Roman family that had a large holding here. The village probably began as one of the many farm villas scattered over the country around Nola, on land the consul Sulla had handed out to his soldiers.

Comiziano was one of the casali of Nola, and it followed Nola's history. In 1640 those casali were enfeoffed for the first time: the viceroy of Naples, in the name of the king of Spain, gave them to Ladislaus Sigismund of Poland. Two years later he sold them to the duke of Maddaloni for thirty-nine thousand ducats, and the year after that the duke passed them on to a royal counsellor. When the lordship at Nola ended, the city and its casali together made one great municipality, which however did not last: the casali were becoming autonomous one after another, and Cumignano set itself up as a centre of its own, with the hamlet of Gallo. In 1698 it was raised to a marquisate. The parish church is of 1500 and was made a parish in 1527 by the bull of a nobleman; the country around is planted with hazelnuts, vines and fruit.