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The Histories of Gambatesa
of Don Donato Venditti

by Angelo Abiuso (Geneva)

Don Donato Venditti's Two Books

Donato Venditti was the parish priest of Gambatesa for more than twenty years.  He died in 1966 at the age of 94.  He was also a monsignor and a judge at a kind of Church court.  Don Donato wrote two books (booklets really, 10-15 pages each) about Gambatesa.  There are copies of these books in the school library and in the castle of Gambatesa.

The first book is about the Cappella della Madonna della Vittoria.  It includes the story of the mosquitos that gave a victory to Frederick Barbarossa over the Saracens.

The second book is about the origins of all the families of Gambatesa.

The Original Location of Gambatesa

In one of these books Don Donato says that the village's original location was in the Piana delle Noci ("The Plain of Walnuts"), between the Salandra and the Vipera hills.  There are still shards of pottery to be found in this valley below the present village of Gambatesa.

Gambatesa was not originally a single village but several settlements.  The names of these settlements were Santa Maria, Bosco Chiusano, Paolina  (which is near the present village of Riccia), and Casino Biandino (which is a masseria ("farm", in the dialect of Gambatesa) belonging to the Gallo family).

The Casino Biandino ("Biandino Farm") is in the Piana delle Noci, and there is a rock there that says: "If you turn me upside down, I am still in a good place", or, "I feel good on the other side too".  It is very old.

There was an ancient cemetery in the Piana delle Noci.  My mother and her father went there to see the archaeologists who had found tombs and the ruins of a monastery.  The Biondino family used to find human bones around their masseria.  The landscape of the Piana delle Noci is very beautiful.

The Original Name of Gambatesa

The name of Gambatesa, when it was built where it is now located, was Rocca Costa (or possibly Roccacosta).  Rocca means "rock" and costa means "coast", from which: a rock that looks like the coast, that is, like a slope going down to the valley.  (Look on the map for a place called i costre, which is maybe where the name was taken from.  The northwestern view of the village suggests a coastline.)

The Families of Gambatesa

Now about the family book.  By using the church records of Gambatesa, Don Donato Venditti was able to determine the year in which each family came to Gambatesa and the place it came from.  His book is about all the families of Gambatesa, including the poor.

The first two families to come to Gambatesa were the Abiuso and Genovese around the year 1500.  The establishment of these families and the building of the first houses in what is now the location of the village of Gambatesa may coincide.

Note: the page Family Registrations of Mons. Donato Venditti lists the family names of Gambatesa and their year of arrival (if between 1688 and 1880; there is also a list of names from before 1688).  The Valente arrived in 1748: the first Valente in Gambatesa were Domenico Valente, his wife Barbara Conte and their two children, Pasquale and Anna, from whom all the Valente in Gambatesa are descended.

About Don Donato Venditti

The Venditti were a prominent family in the village.  They and the d'Alessandro were the two richest families in Gambatesa.  But there were other prominent families (Iosa, di Renzo), although of course not all families bearing these surnames were wealthy (Some were quite poor).

When he was the parish priest of Gambatesa Don Donato used to tell the people: Siamo nati, e dovete morire  ("We are born, and you have to die.")  The people used to joke about this, "Yeah, that's because he thinks he isn't going to die."

Don Donato also wrote a Life of Blessed Giovanni of Tufara, published in 1900, of which there is a short selection (both in the original Italian and in English translation).

The journalist Orlando Abiuso of Gambatesa wrote a death notice for Monsignor Donato Venditti, 7 May 1966, in the newspaper Il Tempo del Molise (The text is in Italian only).  The notice includes a small photograph.


The URL of this Web page: https://www.roangelo.net/valente/monsvend.html
Written by Angelo Abiuso (Geneva).  Last revised: 12 May 2002 : 2002-05-12 by Robert [Wesley] Angelo (Camden).

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