Grezzana

The first document that names this village is the will of a bishop who gave everything away. Nokterio had been born at Grezzana and became bishop of Verona around 900, with the approval of king Berengar: the sources are careful to say that it happened without any previous feudal bond, out of benevolence alone — that is, without paying and without going through the court offices, where careers were normally made. He founded a hospital, gave the cathedral canons a good many properties in the valley and died in poverty in 928. In his will one reads the first mention of the name: «I give my farm in the territory of Grezzana… and my share of the castle». The inscription in Verona cathedral says he rose to heaven stripped of everything, servants included, to whom he granted not only freedom but also a small patrimony, so that they would not end in misery.

Christianity, in this valley, had a hard time. The Valpantena was full of Roman patricians and of pagan places — a lucus, that is a wood sacred to the gods, near Lugo, and a little temple dedicated to Venus at Vendri — and the first conversions are put in the fourth century. In 839 bishop Rotaldo conferred the plebem S. Martini de Gretiana on the deacon Audone; in 1214 Grezzana freed itself from the administration of the cathedral chapter. In 1411 a hospital was built in the square, San Bartolomeo, an exceptional thing for the time: at the time of the French revolution the comune suppressed it and took its goods. From the sixteenth century onwards the outlying villages began to make themselves independent: Azzago in 1578, Bosco in 1612, Erbezzo in 1672.