Battle of Marino

Bloody fight that entrenched rival factions in Catholic Church

Robert of Geneva, rival
pope to Urban VI

Giacomo Orsini, a member of the Orsini family of Rome that produced five popes between the eighth and 18th centuries, stormed the Castle of Marino - in the area south of Rome known as the Castelli Romani - on this day in 1379, bringing a decisive conclusion to a military battle that would end any hopes that the 1378 split in the Catholic Church might be quickly resolved.

The Battle of Marino was fought between armies loyal to Pope Urban VI, the former Archbishop of Bari who had been elected as successor to Pope Gregory XI, and the antipope Clement VII, who had set up rival courts a year earlier following the split that became known as the Great Schism or Western Schism.

The papacy had only just been returned to Rome by Gregory XI from Avignon in France following a fragmentation that had occurred 70 years earlier but the election of Bartolomeo Prignano to rule as Urban VI reignited the division.

Urban VI was hostile toward the French cardinals who had gained significant power during the Avignon years and wanted the papal court to remain in the city in southeastern France.

Those cardinals, fearing that they would become marginalised, responded by declaring that Urban VI’s election was invalid due to having taken place in a climate of fear and instead elected Robert of Geneva to lead the church as Pope Clement VII.

The two rival factions assembled armies. The troops backing Urban VI were mainly Italian mercenaries under the command of Alberico da Barbiano, while the anti-papal army consisted of French mercenaries led by the Count of Montjoie.

The site of the Battle of Marino, fought to the 
south of Rome, as it looks in the present day

They faced each other in the Battle of Marino, fought in the valley east of the town that is now known as the Valley of the Dead, perhaps on account of the bloody battle fought there.

Victory went to the Italians, the battle concluded when the Castle of Marino - on the site of  which the Palazzo Colonna now stands - was besieged by papal troops. The fact that the castle was commanded by Giordano Orsini, a supporter of the antipope, yet the papal soldiers who took it on June 2, 1379 were led by Giordano's son Giacomo, illustrates how the split in the church also divided families. 

Following the defeat of his army, Clement VII, who had based himself in Anagni, 72km (45 miles) southeast of Rome, felt vulnerable and fled Anagni first for Sperlonga, then Gaeta, finally landing in  Naples.

He was received well by Queen Joanna I of Naples, who afforded him great respect, but in the streets he found himself confronted by angry mobs declaring their support for “Papa Urbano". He returned to Gaeta, where he boarded a ship that would ultimately take him to Avignon.

The Western Schism, also known as the Great Schism, would last from 1378 to 1417, a tumultuous period in which there were two - later three - rival popes, each claiming to be the legitimate pontiff.

The division was finally ended by The Council of Constance, which met over a period of four years between 1414 and 1418, eventually finding a mutually acceptable pope in Oddone Colonna, a Roman, who was elected as Pope Martin V. 

Via Roma in Marino, looking
 towards Palazzo Colonna

Travel tip:

Marino today is a town in Lazio, set among the Alban Hills, 21 km (13 miles) southeast of Rome, with a population of 37,684. It is bounded by the towns of Castel Gandolfo, Albano Laziale, Rocca di Papa, Grottaferrata, and Ciampino.  Marino is famous for its white wine, and for its Grape Festival, which has been celebrated since 1924.  Marino suffered extensive damage during World War Two. In 1944 it was heavily bombed by aircraft from the United States Air Force and in the spring of 1945 it was the scene of heavy fighting between troops of the British Indian Army and Axis troops which caused much of the city to be destroyed.  As well as the Palazzo Colonna, built on the site of the former castle, Marino's  main sights include the Basilica of San Barnaba, built in Baroque style, with an imposing façade dating to 1653. Among other works of art, it houses the Martyrdom of St. Bartholomew by Guercino and a bust of St. Anthony Abbot by Ercole Ferrata.

The former palace of Boniface VIII in the
town of Anagni, which has produced four popes

Travel tip:

Anagni is an ancient town in the province of Frosinone in Lazio, built on a hillI above the Sacco Valley, southeast of Rome. It is in an area known as Ciociaria, named after the primitive footwear - ciocie - favoured for many years by people living in the area. It was a papal residence in the Middle Ages and the birthplace of no fewer than four popes: Innocent III, Gregory IX, Alexander IV, and Boniface VIII. With the death of Boniface VIII, the power of the town declined. The mediaeval Palace of Boniface VIII is near the Cathedral. Among sights worth seeking out is the majestic cathedral of Santa Maria Annunziata, built with a mix of Romanesque and Gothic styles and completed in 1104, which stands out as a city’s symbol and seat of the local diocese, with a steeple about 30m (98ft) high. The crypt of San Magno is sometimes called the 'Sistine Chapel of the Middle Age', owing to its  fresco cycle with images telling about the genesis of the world, the creation of humans and their salvation, as well as the lives and miracles of the Saint and other martyrs.

Also on this day: 

1882: The death of unification hero Giuseppe Garibaldi

1957: The birth of cycle racer Roberto Visentini

Festa della Repubblica 

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Mario Pavesi – entrepreneur

Biscuit maker who gave Italian motorists the Autogrill

Mario Pavesi began making
biscuits in 1934

Italy lost one of its most important postwar entrepreneurs when Mario Pavesi died on this day in 1990.

Pavesi, originally from the town of Cilavegna in the province of Pavia in Lombardy, not only founded the Pavesi brand, famous for Pavesini and Ringo biscuits among other lines, but also set up Italy’s first motorway service areas under the name of Autogrill.

Always a forward-thinking businessman, Pavesi foresaw the growing influence American ideas would have on Italy during the rebuilding process in the wake of the Second World War and the way that Italians would embrace road travel once the country developed its own motorway network.

He was one of the first Italian entrepreneurs to take full advantage of advertising opportunities in the press, radio, cinema and later television. 

Born in 1909 into a family of bakers, Pavesi moved to Novara in 1934, opening a pastry shop in Corso Cavour, where he sold a range of cakes and confectionery and served coffee. During the next few years, until Italy became embroiled in the war, he expanded the business in several ways.

By the time hostilities interrupted normal life, he had gone into production with Biscottini di Novara, a traditional biscuit made from eggs, flour and sugar that had been around since the 16^th century but had never before been produced as a commercial product.

The company's famous ad, proclaiming that
"It's always Pavesini time".

Pavesi took an interest in American tastes at the end of the conflict and in the immediate aftermath, when the occupying US military used to share supplies. It was after comparing traditional Italian biscuits with the ones the soldiers were handing round that he decided to travel to the United States on a fact-finding mission.

On his return, he devised a product that was based on the same traditional ingredients but was lighter and easier to digest, which he called Pavesini.  The product became a huge success, based on an advertising campaign that used the slogan: “It’s always Pavesini time".

As well as Pavesini, the company made crackers. In time, Pavesi introduced more winning lines such as his Ringo biscuits – one plain biscuit, one cocoa-flavoured, with a sweet filling – and the chocolate-covered Togo.

Pavesi’s ideas for roadside refreshment outlets grew from what he had encountered in America too, although he was not so much thinking of the needs of motorists so much as selling his biscuits that he decided, in 1947, to open a bar and café next to the A4 Turin-Milan highway, which passed close to the outskirts of Novara, not far from his factory.

Pavesi's Autogrill, straddling the motorway near Novara

Car ownership in Italy was small at the time – only one vehicle for every 100 people – so turnover was modest initially, but as the post-War economic recovery began to take hold, so more cars began passing his kiosk, and more of them stopped. Pavesi added more tables, a bigger covered area, and designated part of it as a restaurant, serving hot meals. Italy’s first Autogrill was born.

Far-sighted as ever, Pavesi knew he was on to a winner and began to look for other locations along the country’s highway network, which began to grow at a rapid rate in the 50s and 60s as the car manufacturers concentrated on the mass production of affordable, economy cars for ordinary Italians to drive.

Pavesi enlisted the help of architects, in particular the urban designer Angelo Bianchetti, who conceived the idea of restaurants that straddled both lanes of the motorway, great glass and steel structures supported by enormous girders, which had the advantage of being accessible to drivers on both sides of the highway.

The first of these, opened at Fiorenzuola d'Arda, between Parma and Piacenza, in 1959, was the first of its kind in Europe.  On many occasions, particularly lunchtime on Sundays, it would see every table taken, not just by passing travellers but by local people intrigued by the idea of cars racing beneath them as they ate.

Mario Pavesi (left), with the architect Angelo
Bianchetti, who designed many of the Autogrills

The original restaurant outside Novara, at Veveri, was transformed along similar lines in 1962.

In the 1970s, Pavesi found competition from Motta and Alemagna in a rapidly expanding market, and by then there were more than 200 rest areas across the 3,900km (2,450 miles) network of motorways.

The boom was threatened by the oil crisis of the 1970s, which plunged all three companies into crisis, but state intervention saved the day, with the catering sections of all three companies becoming part of a new state-run entity, Autogrill SpA.

The Pavesi brand is now owned by the Barilla group.

Pavesi passed away after a heart attack in Rocca di Papa, one of the Castelli Romani towns in the Alban Hills, some 25km (16 miles) southeast of Rome.

The enormous cupola of the Basilica of San
Gaudenzio dwarfs the ball tower

Travel tip:

The city of Novara, where Pavesi opened his first bakery and store, a little more than 20km (12 miles) from his home town of Cilavegna, is the second largest city in Piedmont after Turin, with a population of just over 100,000. It is notable for its attractive historic centre, at the heart of which is the Piazza della Repubblica, where visitors can find the Broletto, an arcaded courtyard around which are clustered a number of palaces housing a civic museum and art gallery and the town hall, as well as the 19^th century neo-classical cathedral designed by Alessandro Antonelli, who was responsible also for the city’s major landmark, the Basilica of San Guadenzio, with its tall multi-tiered cupola, which stands 121m (397ft) high.

Stay in Turin with Booking.com

Rocca di Papa from Piazza della Repubblica

Travel tip:

Rocca di Papa, where Pavesi died, is a town of around 16,000 people and one of a group of communities in the Alban Hills southeast of Rome known as the Castelli Romani – the Roman Castles.  Built on a rocky outcrop, it is the site of a papal fortress once the home of Pope Eugene III, on top of which is built the Royal Geodynamic Observatory.  The town suffered considerable damage during bombing in the Second World War, after it was used as a strategic stronghold by the occupying German army, but has undergone substantial reconstruction since.

Hotels in Rocca di Papa by Booking.com



More reading:

The former peasant farmer who founded the Lavazza coffee company

How Karl Zuegg made his name synonymous with jam and juice

Francesco Cirio - Italy's canning pioneer

Also on this day:

1905: The birth of Enrico Piaggio: the man behind the Vespa scooter

1914: The birth of Nobel Prize-winning physiologist Renato Dulbecco

1921: The birth of Giulietta Masina - the actress who married Fellini

(Picture credits: Basilica of San Gaudenzio by Umby; Rocca di Papa by Gugganij; via Wikimedia Commons)

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Pope Adrian IV

The warlike conduct of England’s one and only pontiff

A cameo of Pope Adrian IV at the
Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris

The only Englishman to have ever sat on the papal throne, Nicholas Breakspear, became Pope on this day in 1154 in Rome.

Breakspear, who was from Abbots Langley in Hertfordshire, had previously been created Cardinal Bishop of Albano by Pope Eugene III.

After his election as Pope, Breakspear took the name of Adrian IV (also known as Hadrian IV) and immediately set about dealing with the anti-papal faction in Rome.

After Frederick Barbarossa, Duke of Swabia, caught and hanged the leader of the faction, a man known as Arnold of Brescia, Adrian crowned Frederick as Holy Roman Emperor in 1155 to reward him.

He then formed an alliance with the Byzantine Emperor, Manuel Comnenus, against the Normans in Sicily.

Adrian raised mercenary troops in Campania to fight alongside the Byzantine forces and the alliance was immediately successful, with many cities giving in, either because of the threat of force or the promise of gold.

Frederick I as portrayed in a document in
the Vatican library dated 1188

But the Normans launched a counter attack by land and sea and many of the mercenaries deserted leaving the Byzantine troops outnumbered and forced to return home.

Adrian is also believed to have urged King Henry II of England to invade Ireland and bring the church under Roman control. It was claimed that Henry’s mother, the Empress Mathilda, protested about it and so the proposed invasion was postponed.

Then a letter Adrian sent to Frederick I was misinterpreted by one of the Emperor’s officials causing a breach between the two leaders. Adrian was just about to excommunicate the Holy Roman Emperor when he died at Anagni near Rome in 1159, reputedly from choking on a fly in his wine, but it has also been suggested he was possibly suffering from a quinsy, a complication of tonsilitis.

Travel tip:

The Diocese of Albano, where Adrian IV was Cardinal Bishop between 1149 and 1154, includes several towns in the Castelli Romano area of Lazio. It was founded in the fourth century after a Basilica had been built at Albano Laziale, 25 kilometres from Rome. Albano is now one of the most important municipalities of the Castelli Romani. It is close to Castel Gandolfo, where the Pope’s present day summer residence was built in the 17th century for  Pope Urban VIII.

The Cathedral of Santa Maria in Agnani

Travel tip:

Agnani, where Adrian IV died, is an ancient town, southeast of Rome in an area of Italy known as the Ciociaria, which takes its name from the type of footwear, cioce, once worn by the local people. In the 12th and 13th centuries, Agnani became one of the favourite residences of the Popes, who considered it safer and healthier than Rome. One of the main sights is the Cathedral of Santa Maria, built in Romanesque style between 1071 and 1105.

More reading:

St Clare of Assisi - the count's daughter inspired by hearing Francis of Assisi preach

Pope John Paul II - first non-Italian pope for 455 years

The 33-day reign of the 'smiling pope'

Also on this day:

1798: Death of the scientist whose name added a new word to the language

(Picture credits: Agnani Cathedral by Livioandronico2013 via Wikimedia Commons)




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