View of Lunigiana between Filattiera and Aulla.

The Lunigiana is an historical territory of Italy, which today falls within the provinces of La Spezia and Massa Carrara. Its borders derive from the ancient Roman settlement, later the medieval diocese of Luni, which no longer exists.

Lunigiana covers an area from the Apennines to the Magra river, belonging in part to Tuscany and in part to Liguria. It takes its name from Luni, a Roman town, perhaps pre-dated by an Etruscan settlement, which became the principal urban center on the northern Tuscan coast. Some contend that the name Luni refers to the moon, a celestial body whose beauty is made all the more attractive when framed by the white-peaked Apuan Alps and high Apennine mountains. Others maintain, though little or no evidence exists, that the region was populated by those who worshiped the moon. As if to unite history and myth, the symbol of contemporary Lunigiana is a crescent moon held in the claw of a bear. The earliest inhabitants of this region may have been the Apuani (from which is derived the name of the Apuan mountain chain), an ancient Ligurian people, as well as Etruscans who may have inhabited towns along the coast and even the hamlets near in-land trade routes. Curiously, while evidence of both Roman and later Medieval settlements are ample, the wondrously appealing stele, late pre-historic and Bronze Age stone statues which have been found in large numbers in this part of Tuscany, remain the symbol of this ancient land. They are the first expression of the art and, perhaps, of the religious beliefs of the peoples that inhabited northern Tuscany from the Bronze Age to start of the Roman Empire.

Castles[link]

During the Middle Ages, there were 160 castles in Lunigiana, only thirty of which have reached our times in a good state of preservation while others such as the castle of Agnino di Fivizzano have fallen into ruin. It was in these castles that Dante found respite during his stay in Lunigiana. The historical origins of these castles date back to times when the Lombards dominated most of the Pianura Padana and, seeking an outlet on the Ligurian/Tuscan coast, they found in the Cisa Pass and the Cerreto Pass, near the town of Fivizzano, the easiest ways to cross the Apennines.

During ancient times, when the settlement of Luni, originally founded by the Romans in 177 BC, (today a site of significant Roman ruins and a modern museum) was a flourishing city and harbour, the Romans had already built solid defensive posts along the Via Aurelia, a major road which linked up central Italy to Lunigiana and from Lunigiana to both the coastal road through Liguria and to Gaul (modern France) and across the Apennines into what is now the province of Reggio Emilia. Upon significant sections of this Roman road, the Lombards would later build the Via Francigena, for the control of which there were bloody and ferocious struggles among the local nobility, concerned with the maintenance their dominion and fiefdoms, as well as between the states of Pisa and Lucca and, later still, between Florence, Milan and Genoa.

The most important castles in Lunigiana, including La Verrucola, the famous castle of Fivizzano formerly inhabited by the late artist Pietro Cascella, and the castle of the Piagnaro in Pontremoli, the Rocca of Villafranca, the Malaspina castle in the city of Massa and the fortified village of Filetto, had been built as a result of these monumental struggles for control of Lunigiana. Moreover, when the Malaspina (one of the leading Lunigianese dynasties during the Middle Ages) played an import part in both the local politics of Lunigiana and the politics of northern Italy, they built a great number of castles, which were used as residences and fortifications by which several branches of the dynasty defended the territory.

Some scholars contend that with the growth of flourishing branches of the Malaspina dynasty, the inheritance of Lunigianese feudal territories by the ever contesting large and small branches of the family eventually brought about a diminution of individual holdings causing, in the end, the parceling of fiefdoms into increasingly smaller estates, all of which needed to be protected through the building of castles and other stone fortifications. Thus, through the centuries, many large and small (now picturesque) castles were built in Lunigiana, but at the cost of weakening the overall power of the family at each generation.

As a region which controls the passage from Tuscany to the northern territories of Lombardy and Parma, as well as from Tuscany to the eastern lands of Liguria and across the Apennines into Reggio Emilia, Lunigiana was fought over for centuries in countless wars which pitted the native feudal dynasties against one another. Then, in order to gain control of this strategic region, Luccans fought Pisans, Pisa struggled with Genoese, Milanese struck out against the Modense and Florentines made war on them all. While the Genoese were able to gain control of La Spezia, Lerici, Sarzana and much of the littoral coast all the way from the Cinque Terre to ancient Luni itself, the Milanese took more northern parts of Lunigiana. Meanwhile, some northeastern Lunigianese towns came under the control of either Parma or Modena. Nevertheless, the most strategic parts of ancient Lunigiana began to come under the control of the Florentine state in the early 15th century. By the second half of that century, Tuscan possession of most of Lunigiana was secured with the incorporation of Fivizzano and its vast territory into the Tuscan state. With Italian unification in the mid-nineteenth century, most of Lunigiana, though divided for centuries among the contesting duchies and city-states of northern Italy, came into the new Kingdom of Italy as part of Tuscany proper.

Bibliography[link]

• Caterina Rapetti, Accanto al camino. Diavoli stolti e contadini astuti nelle favole della Lunigiana, illustrations of Davide Danti, Milano, Edizioni dell'Arco 2007, ISBN 88-7876-096-X.

External links[link]

• Massa Carrara province portal
• Terre di Lunigiana Lunigiana travel guide
• A Path to Lunch Lunigiana based archive and blog
• Ciao Lunigiana Lunigiana local guide

Giovanni Sforza d'Aragona (1466 – 27 July 1510) was an Italian condottiero, lord of Pesaro and Gradara from 1483 until his death. He is best known as the first husband of Lucrezia Borgia. Their marriage was annulled on claims of his impotence in March 1497.

Life and marriage[link]

The illegitimate son of Costanzo I Sforza, he was a member of the powerful House of Sforza, in the line of Pesaro and Gradara (the Milanese line held the Duchy of Milan at the time). At the death of his father in 1483 he inherited the lordship of Pesaro and Gradara.

coin of the 16th century with the face of Giovanni Sforza on it

In 1489 Giovanni had married Maddalena Gonzaga, daughter of Federico I of Mantua, but she died the following year. He was thus viewed as a valuable link to Milan by the Borgia family. With the help of Giovanni's cousin, Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, the family finalized marriage negotiations in February 1492 between Giovanni, then in his mid-twenties, and Lucrezia Borgia, the thirteen-year-old illegitimate daughter of Pope Alexander VI. A proxy marriage took place on 12 June that year, as the wedding contract stipulated that Lucrezia would stay in Rome and not consummate the marriage for a year. Her dowry was 31,000 ducats. The official marriage was celebrated in the Vatican in 1493, and reputedly was a lavish and decadent affair.

He and Lucrezia spent two years in Pesaro, during which his importance to the ambitious Borgia family dwindled. Sforza tried to wield his proximity to the Borgias to Milan's advantage by acting as a spy, and was found out by Alexander VI. Meanwhile, other political advantages (particularly with Naples) were formed, rendering the strategic marriage useless. Lucrezia, used to privileged life in the Papal court, did not adjust to the provincial atmosphere of Pesaro. By Christmas 1495, both Giovanni and Lucrezia were present again in the court at Rome.

By then, Sforza was aware that his fortune was precarious. He left Rome to continue with a military campaign, and upon his return in February 1497 quickly fled the city in disguise. The accepted reason for this is that the Pope and his son Cesare had contrived a plot to murder Giovanni, but Lucrezia was informed in advance by Cesare and warned her husband to leave. This has not been proven, but remains a popular explanation.

Annulment and late life[link]

The Pope petitioned for an annulment on Lucrezia's behalf in 1497 (there was no such thing as divorce at this time.) Ascanio Sforza was again called in to mediate between his nephew and the Borgias, and tried to persuade Giovanni into accepting the annulment. However, Giovanni refused to do so on at least two grounds: first, he would have to return Lucrezia's sizable dowry, and second, doing so would require signing a paper that stated he was impotent. Some sources state that Giovanni had married and even fathered illegitimate children prior to his union with Lucrezia, which is not unreasonable given his age; therefore, genuine impotence on his part would be unlikely.

In response, Sforza accused Lucrezia of parental and fraternal incest. This claim, first made solely against the Pope and later extended to all of Lucrezia's brothers, still continues to shade the family's history. It became a popular example of the depravity later attributed to the family, despite its lack of verifiability.

The marriage was eventually annulled in 1497 on grounds of non-consummation. The Sforza family had by then threatened to withhold protection to Giovanni if he did not comply with the offer, which allowed him to keep the dowry but still required signing the confirmation of impotence. In March or December, Sforza agreed to the terms; six months later, he provided sworn testimony that Lucrezia was a virgin. Ironically, Lucrezia was then allegedly pregnant with the Roman Infante, whose parentage was cited by some as proof of incest between her and Cesare. It is certain that Sforza did not parent the child, but details beyond that are uncertain.

In 1500 Giovanni was excommunicated, and the citizens of one of his cities attempted to kill him. He was also attacked by Cesare Borgia, who aimed to gain Sforza's lands, and was forced to abandon Pesaro. He sued for help to all the major powers of the time --including France and Holy Roman Empire -- but in vain. Giovanni Sforza could return to Pesaro only after the death of Alexander VI and the illness of Cesare Borgia (1503). The following year the new Pope, Julius II, confirmed him as vicariate in Pesaro.

He remarried to Ginevra Tiepolo, who gave him an heir, Costanzo II (Giovanni Maria), who succeeded him in Pesaro and Gradara.

He died in Pesaro in 1510.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Page at condottieridiventura.it (Italian)