Incudine

Incudine is cut in two by the Oglio, and the two halves have names that say which side the sun is on: the northern part, facing south-west, is called Incudine al Solivo, from Sulìf, which in Camunian means a sunny place; the southern part, facing north, is Incudine al Vago, from Vàch, the shaded side of the valley. About the village's name there are two stories. The first is a bota, as tales handed down by word of mouth are called here: it says that the place was born, in Roman or medieval times, as a collection and guard camp for slaves, and that the name comes from the anvil on which the irons that chained them were beaten back. The second, preferred by some scholars, imagines a band of nomads arrived from the Hungarian plains during the migrations of the early Middle Ages, who stopped here and put up a few rural houses against the mountain, above the Oglio.

On Sunday the fifteenth of March 1299 a consul of the vicinia of Incudine, Giovanni Gustanci, went to Edolo with some neighbours before the chamberlain of the bishop of Brescia and confirmed that in their territory every right, custom and jurisdiction belonged to the bishop; they paid the tithes, and it was put on record that the men of Incudine were obliged to go hunting once a year for the curia. In that act forty tenants are listed. In 1634, on ecclesiastical advice, a rock was destroyed near mount Fasano where people used to climb in procession in times of drought. The village was an important market for buying pigs, and from that comes the nickname the neighbours pinned on its people: Strüghei, that is unreliable pig sellers, or Pórcei. At the foot of the San Vito peak, at one thousand eight hundred and sixty metres, stands the little church of Saints Vitus and Anne: it was full of votive offerings, today nearly all kept in the parish church, and a local legend links Saint Vitus to the Wild Man.