Historical and bibliographical research by Prof. Ferdinando Alterio
Venafro immersed in olive trees: from the Monachetti to Nola
At the end of the 17th century Benedetto and Giovanni Antonio Monachetti, in their handwritten works “Storia di Venafro” (History of Venafro), likened the town to a bird in flight.
“This town spreads out two wings to right and left: between the slopes of its mountains and the plain, two stretches of olive groves two miles long on each side, and all these olive groves so well tended that they might be called gardens rather than forests of olives. I would liken this town to a bird lying on its back with its wings and tail open and outstretched, the town being the body, the olive groves the wings, and the tail made of three bands: the first, next to the body, of vegetable gardens, the second of vineyards, and the third of fields, and finally the tip of the tail reaching the waters of the Volturno.”
For Eugenio Capaldi the Venafro olive is a source of pride and wealth.
“And for several kilometres, on both sides of Venafro, along the slopes of the mountains, this airy colour spreads, imprinted on the land.
The Venafro olive, for its trunk and the spread of its branches, rivals the oak. If Venafro was not, as is said, the first in Italy to cultivate them, it is certain that no other town can prove it came first, and there is good evidence that olive trees were taken from Venafro to the south of what is now France.
In the bleak winter months those olive forests of Venafro offer work and easy earnings to every class of people, and above all to people not usually engaged in farm work. Against frost, storms and the greedy, bold hands of the peasant, they take what precautions they can; and those forests endure and grow luxuriantly: may the true God save them from some dictatorial decree and from those who have nothing and know not what to do.”
The considerable extent of the area under olives was preserved until the end of the last century, as emerges from the meticulous Physical, Economic and Moral Monograph of Venafro of 1877, written by the Primicerius Francesco Lucenteforte:
“At the foot of the mountain that rises to the north-west of the valley lies Venafro, which overlooks the plain below. A stranger arriving there for the first time cannot fail to be struck by the fine panorama that meets his gaze. He sees two forests of sturdy olive trees, flourishing luxuriantly to the right and left of the town along the slopes of the mountain from the village of Ceppagna to Pozzilli, over an area of more than nine kilometres by two; he observes well-ordered vegetable gardens and abundant waters which, after driving several mills, descend to form the charming river of S. Bartolomeo.”
Gennaro Nola, in an essay on Venafro olive growing from 1936, emphasises:
“A forest of olive trees surrounds the buildings of the town of Venafro on three sides, offering the visitor a spectacle of beauty and serenity, especially when this whole dense forest of olives, tossed by the wind, appears to the onlooker like a magnificent silver sea.”
Journey to Venafro, from the Marquis De Salis to Francesco Jovine
In 1789 the Marquis Carlo Ulisse De Salis visited the Kingdom of Naples.
“From Isernia I continued my journey along the Volturno, through wheat fields, vineyards, oak woods and hills covered with shrubs, on whose summit there is generally a village. As there is no bridge, I had to cross the Volturno by ferry; it sometimes rises so much as to prevent all communication and temporarily halt traffic.
Immediately after crossing the river I reached Venafro, a small town of 3,000 souls belonging to the Princess of Avellino. In the limited territory of Venafro much wheat, wine, pulses and fruit are produced; but more important than anything else is the quality and quantity of the oil obtained there every year.
The oil of these lands was famous even in Roman times, and still today the finest varieties of olive tree are found here, foremost among them the Sergia olive, which Dr Presta of Gallipoli believes to be the Licinia mentioned by Pliny.”
In 1861 Milanese soldiers came to Venafro to express and strengthen brotherhood in the new kingdom.
“Before a flat valley more than 20 miles in circumference, spreading out like a star. And all around, as far as the eye can reach, and the distance is great, the gaze delights in the beauty of so many olive trees which, as a sign of peace, seem as though they should establish between the Creator and the creature an indissoluble pact of love.”
“Venafro rises on the flank of Monte S. Croce, at a little less than half its height, from where a vast expanse can be overlooked; but the best place from which to overlook the whole province of Terra di Lavoro is the summit of S. Croce itself, which by virtue of its height offers one of those spectacles that God granted to be seen constantly by those born among the mountains, who seem to
rise more lightly, uncontaminated by the stench of the great cities. An enchanting sight on those plains and on those mountains is the marvellous cultivation of olive trees, which the people of Venafro introduced as far back as the time of Tarquinius Priscus, when it was still unknown in Italy” (Carlo Tedeschi).
The foothill olive groves captured the interest of the Molise writer Francesco Jovine, who dedicated the tenderest words to the place and its trees.
“Rich, well-watered fields, happy with the densest vegetation; straight roads travelled by nimble, brightly painted carts, ponies adorned with tassels and jingling bells. Up at the edges of the plain the countryside reaches towards the nearby mountains with the lazy sweetness of slopes and banks thick with olive trees whose crowns are entirely green and leafy; the many trees, in fine order, form a wood, they share a warm solidarity of life.
Into its jars there still flows, as two thousand years ago, the oil, yellow and thick as honey, that Cicero loved.”
Horace’s green oil
In a gentle, twilight ode, Q. Horatius Flaccus confides to his dear friend Septimius his wish to spend his old age at Tivoli, but should anything prevent him, he would have preferred the countryside of Taranto.
“May it please heaven that Tivoli, founded by Argive settlers, be my home in old age, and that it mark for me, weary, the end of journeys by sea and land and of military toils. If the hostile Fates keep me away from there, I shall make for the river Galaesus, beloved of the woolly flocks, and for the countryside ruled by Spartan Taranto: that little corner smiles on me above all others on earth, where the honey is not inferior to that of Hymettus and the olive vies with the verdant one of Venafro; there heaven grants a long spring and a mild winter” and Aulon, dear to fruitful Bacchus, does not envy the Falernian grape”.
Giovanni Presta, an 18th-century author, paid great attention to the word “viridique” and considered that it was not used by chance; in a note in one of his books he states:
“Horace was not a poet to give the epithet green to the olive by chance, the olive from which our oil was made in his day: Viridique certat bacca Venafro.”
Presta shows no doubt that “oleum viride”, or as he prefers to call it semi-omphacine oil, was produced at Taranto and Venafro:
“In October in fact it happens among us that they (the olives) are as speckled as Columella required them to be when they were to be picked to make the fine oil that the Romans called oleum viride, oleum strictivum, oleum ad unguenta, as above all was the most celebrated oil of the Licinian olive of the countryside of Venafro, although the difference in climate and location delayed this there until November.”
“We have no author who openly assures us that omphacine oil was also made among the Salentines, but since Horace sang of our oil ‘viridique certat bacca Venafro’, it is to be inferred that he meant omphacine oil, since he was not a poet to give the epithet green, ‘viridique’, by chance and without reason.”
The cultivation of the Venafro olive through the millennia
Marcus Porcius Cato, named “the Censor” for his tenacious defence of Roman traditions, mentions the olive and the oil of Venafro in his handbook “Liber de Agricultura”.
“In rich, warm soil plant olives for preserving: the larger radius, the Sallentine, the orchis, the posea, the Sergian, the Colminian, the albicera, preferably whichever is said to be the best in those places. Plant this olive at intervals of twenty-five or thirty feet. No other field will be good for an olive grove except one that faces the west wind and is well exposed to the sun.
If a field is rather cold and poor, the Licinian olive should be planted there: if instead you plant it on rich, warm soil, the oil will be bad, the tree will die from overbearing and red moss will ruin it.”
M. T. Varro and Pliny the Elder confirm the Licinia’s adaptation to, and preference for, poor and cold soil:
“In rather cold and thin soil, the Licinian olive should be planted. If you put it in a rich, warm place, it gives bad oil, the plant dies from excessive fruitfulness and becomes covered with a red that makes it sickly” and “being moreover attacked by moss and rust”, Pliny specifies. The latter, on the other hand, in his Naturalis Historia (XVII, 31) states: “in the territory of Venafro the gravelly soil is most suitable for growing olives” (glareosum oleis solum aptissimum in Venafrano).
The Marquis Carlo Ulisse De Salis, in his Journey through the Kingdom of Naples of 1789, notes that at Venafro “In years of good harvest more than 70,000 staia of oil are obtained, which is sold at 16 carlini a staio. The olive groves I examined are all in the most flourishing condition, and I observed that the pruning of the trees was very good.”
Lucenteforte, by contrast, already at the end of the 19th century, dwelt on mistaken cultivation practices, stating: “The owners of olive groves, held back by the slowness with which the olive grows and by their reluctance to lose the fruit they would have had from the branches cut, cannot bring themselves to prune an olive tree until they see it in poor condition and scrawny.
But then they are forced, against their will, to cut large branches; and since they see that the wound does not heal, but becomes cankerous so that the wood is eaten away and the trunk hollow, they become even stronger enemies of pruning.”
The damage caused by bad pruning is also expressed in verse:
Look at the trunk,
All hollow! Why? See there the cut
Of the great branch, and how a wide
Deep and incurable wound stood here,
Which, turning gangrenous, little by
Little has eaten the wood away, so much
That it now barely keeps a sign of life.
Why does it look so languid all over?
Again, Lucenteforte, in his Monograph of Venafro (1877), examines the arrangement of the olive trees: “And the olive groves of Venafro have precisely the appearance of a shady forest, both through lack of spacing and especially because the trees are generally not arranged symmetrically.” The author then explains: “Whoever looks at the oldest olive groves and at those that seem most disorderly will find order, direction and symmetry in the oldest trees, and the very opposite in the more recent ones; from which he will conclude that the fault belongs to later times, for various reasons, all born of the greed of the owner, who always strives to have more trees than the space allows.”
Venafro oil for the most fastidious and the richest
Giovanni Presta, in his “Memoir on the sixty-two different samples of oil presented to His Majesty Ferdinand IV, King of the Two Sicilies” (1788), speaking of the finest oil in Roman times, wrote: “In this Venafro stood out, other lands stood out, but neither Attica, nor the Sabine country, nor the Roman; and the little that was obtained from Venafro was mostly reserved for the owners of the olive groves; it was reserved for the most refined, the most fastidious, the richest” … “and yet it will not be found that our oils are surpassed by those of Venafro, and in particular by those of the Licinia, which was the olive whose oil the ancients knew of none better”.
Juvenal, the Latin writer, in his satire on the rich Virro, recounted that Virro poured Venafro oil over his squill surrounded by asparagus, while over his guest’s little prawn, wretched egg and cabbage was poured lamp oil from Numidia, brought to Rome by the descendants of Micipsa:
“Ipse venafrano piscem perfudit: at hic, qui | pallidus adfertur misero tibi caulis, plebi | lanternam…”.
Q. Horatius Flaccus, in a satire, learns from his friend Catius that at a dinner it is the rule to serve two sauces, one of which must include Venafro oil among its ingredients:
“It is worth knowing the nature of two kinds of sauce: a simple one made of fresh oil, to be combined with full-bodied wine and with brine, no different from that which took on its aroma in the jars of Byzantium; the other is obtained by boiling this with chopped herbs, sprinkling it with Corycian saffron and leaving it to cool, with the addition of olive oil pressed in the presses of Venafro.”
In another satire, he has Fundanius describe the dinner that Nasidienus Rufus gave for Maecenas. He extols the flavour of a moray eel caught while carrying eggs, surrounded by crabs swimming in a sauce whose ingredients include Venafro oil from the first pressing.
“Here appears, laid out on a platter, a moray eel surrounded by crabs swimming in the sauce. This one (says the host) was caught while carrying eggs, because after spawning the flesh is less tasty. The sauce is made of these ingredients: Venafro oil from the first pressing; fish extract from Iberia; five-year-old wine, but from our own lands, poured in while everything is boiling.”
Fundanius, father-in-law of M. T. Varro, meets his son-in-law at the Sementivae festival and, talking of the mildness of our climate, declares:
“On the contrary, in Italy there is nothing useful that not only does not grow here, but does not also turn out well. What grain could ever be compared with the grain of Campania? What wheat with that of Apulia? What wine with Falernian? What oil with Venafro’s? And is not Italy so planted with trees that the whole of it looks like an orchard? Is Phrygia, which Homer calls rich in vines, any more abundant in wine? Or Argos, which the same poet calls rich in wheat? Where does every iugerum of land yield 10 to 15 skins of wine, as some regions of Italy do?”
Perfumes were made at Capua and Venafro:
G. Cotugno reports
“and with good reason the perfumers of Capua used it to make their precious rose ointments.”
According to G. Morra, there were workshops at Venafro for extracting floral essences.
“Another industry that seems to have been present at Venafro was the extraction of flower essences, which became widespread in Campania after the trade in foreign cosmetics was banned in 189 BC to reduce imports from the East. Over time it must have progressed considerably and its fame spread, if Martial, 273 years later, composed the following epigram. …” “The olives of Campanian Venafro have distilled this oil for you: every time you take an ointment, it too has this scent.”
Venafro oil: a world record
No place in the world planted with olives has more traditions, or is more often cited by ancient sources, than the foothill territory of Venafro.
Pliny, in the Historia Naturalis, ranks the best oils of the ancient world.
“If we understand it properly, nature has been provident in this, in that the immediate consumption of wine, born to intoxicate, does not meet a practical need, and indeed the touch of mellowness that wine acquires with age invites us to keep it; she did not want oil to be hoarded and has consequently spread its use even among ordinary people. In this resource too, first place in the whole world has been won by Italy, thanks above all to the territory of Venafro and to that district of it from which Licinian oil is obtained, which is why the Licinian olive too has become highly prized. This pre-eminence was conferred on it by perfumes, with which its scent blends well, as well as by the more refined judgement of the palate. Besides, no bird pecks at Licinian olives. The next place in this contest is shared equally between Istria and Baetica. For the rest, the provinces are more or less equal in the quality of their produce, with the exception of the soil of Africa, producer of harvests: nature granted it wholly to Ceres; as for wine and
oil, she merely did not deny them to it and gave it sufficient glory with its cereals.”
At the end of the 17th century Benedetto and Giovanni Antonio Monachetti, in their handwritten works “Storia di Venafro”, in the chapter “Oil and Olives”, extol the oil and the management of the olive groves, recalling the geographer Strabo (1st century BC).
“This town is most abundant in every sort of thing necessary for human sustenance; above all, it spreads out on both sides, almost like two wings, most abundant olive groves from which oil of perfect make is gathered, such that, according to the testimony of ancient and modern authors, there is no better oil in the whole realm of the world.
The testimony of Strabo, giving the honour for all things necessary for human sustenance, that is grain, wine and oil, to the Campania therefore called Felix, admits no preference as to grain; in wine he praises Falernian, Setinian and Calenian; the pre-eminence in oil he restricts to that of Venafro alone, of which he says thus: ‘Venafrum unde oleum optimum’.”
In the 2nd century BC, Marcus Porcius Cato, in the Liber de Agricultura, recommended applying to the sale of olives the “Lex oleae pendentis”, which he had tried out at Venafro, where he owned an olive grove of 240 iugera (60 hectares)
“Olives are sold on the tree under this contract: ‘Olives on the tree on an estate at Venafro will be sold. Whoever buys the olives, in addition to the agreed price, shall give one hundredth of the whole sum to the collector, and the price of this notice, which is fifty sesterces. In addition he shall give one thousand five hundred pounds of Roman oil, two hundred pounds of green oil, fifty modii of windfall olives and ten of hand-picked olives: everything measured with the oil modius.’”
