Brogliano

The name comes from the medieval Latin brolium, an enclosed garden or wood, and points to the holdings of a local lord. But Brogliano stands where it does because of a flood: the early Christian church of San Martino was down on the valley floor, on the right bank of the Agno, and the water destroyed it shortly after the year one thousand; at almost the same time the hamlet was abandoned and its people moved a little further south, founding the present village. In April 1938 it was another flood that gave the proof back: the Agno left its bed and brought to light the ruins and the floor of that very ancient place of worship, a rectangular hall oriented east to west with a semicircular apse, and a Lombard fragment showing a warrior armed with a spear, his long hair parted down the middle.

Saint Martin of Tours was one of the patrons of the converted Lombards, which is why the dedication matters here. In the fourteenth century the church became the mother church of the whole valley, and the Statutes of Brogliano, drawn up on the sixteenth of April 1364 and kept in the Bertoliana library in Vicenza, record an obligation running the opposite way to the usual one: Bartolomeo della Scala, then lord of the Vicenza territory, was bound to give the church of San Martino a candle of four pounds every Holy Saturday. Later San Martino lost its rank to Valdagno and Trissino, and at the end of the sixteenth century the territory was bought by the counts Piovene, who held it until the fall of the Venetian Republic.