Albonese

Albonese probably takes its name from the Arbogna torrent on which it stands, in the northern Lomellina, on the border with the province of Novara. It belonged to the comitato of Lomello and had lords of its own, perhaps descended from the palatine counts of Lomello: the Albonese are always recorded as counts, which points to some old comital family. In 1164 the village is named in the diploma by which Frederick I officially granted Pavia dominion over the lands of the old county — lands the Pavesi had in fact subjected some time before. And in the map of 1581 which, in the Gallery of Maps of the Vatican Palaces, depicts the Duchy of Milan, the village's name appears garbled as Alboleſſo: it is there, but misspelled.

What makes Albonese a rare case comes afterwards. The counts went on exercising the local lordship even under Pavia, and that feudal possession was never once interrupted until the end of feudalism, in 1797: a very long and peaceful rule of one place by a single family, which in Lombardy is not a common thing. The family soon split into several branches and among the branches there were quarrels; other quarrels the Albonese had with the Comune, because — and this is the rare part — the feudal revenues, tolls included, were owned in whole or in part by the Comune, whereas elsewhere they were almost always in the feudatory's hands. With the whole Lomellina, Albonese passed to the Savoy states in 1713 and entered the province of Pavia in 1859. The arms too have changed their mind: today's derive from those of the counts of Lomello, but until 2003 the comune used a rising sun — canting arms playing on the likeness of the name to alba, the dawn — with the letters A and E and a lion gripping a sword.