Ticengo

Ticengo is a small village of the plain between Soncino and Romanengo, and its coat of arms reads like a table of contents: a castle, a pair of scissors and a purse. The castle recalls the old fortification of which few traces remain today; the parish church, dedicated to Saint Andrew the apostle, is of the sixteenth century. The territory is crossed by the old state road that leads to Orzinuovi, but for half a century a rail passed here too: between 1880 and 1931 the village had a stop on the Lodi–Crema–Soncino tramway, and whoever had to go to town took the tram. Then the line was dismantled, like almost all the tramways of the lower plain.

The scissors and the purse, instead, belong to a person. The Tucengo family, later Tucenghi, took its name precisely from this village, and worked as merchants and makers of clothes: from that family, at Cremona, in the first half of the twelfth century, Omobono was born. The name — which means good man — was given him by his father. He carried on the family trade and gave away to the poor what he earned; he died on 13 November 1197, and just two years later, in 1199, pope Innocent III proclaimed him a saint: he is said to have been the first Italian layman canonised by a pope. The scissors in the arms are the tailor's, the purse is the one for alms.