I just discovered recently, through reading an article in our local magazine
Città Viva that a well has been reopened in Todi. Sounds relatively mundane, but the real interest is that its existence had been lost to local knowledge for the last several hundred years and only rediscovered in the past six years. Last year, the local historical society obtained permission to reopen the site.
The well itself is located on the Via del Mezzomuro, which is halfway down the main drag leaving town, and is a road that has one of the medieval walls on one side, and open views on the other. It was historically a boundary between the city and agricultural land that was protected by the outer walls, but housing supplanted the orchards just after the second world war. As a result, it's now fairly central in the residential part of the city.
As described in the article, the well was used during the Middle Ages in the treatment of ergotism (St. Anthony's Fire) and scabies, and was thought to have curative powers (particularly when combined with a salve made with oils and the fruit of a
euonymous (spindle bush) plant. Conveniently situated near the church of St. Anthony (the patron saint of ergotism and skin maladies), which had an associated hospital -- this hospital became the site of one of Todi's butchers, since closed, and was originally part of the shoemaker's fraternity -- it is possible that its purportedly curative powers were more due to the care people received in this local clinic.
While the well's origins are not known precisely, historians were able to use the local archives to track down the first time it's mentioned in the records: January 30, 1297; at this time, it is noted that the well was decayed and in need of repair. This indicates fairly obviously that the well antedated this period by a fair number of years.
The well is noted at various times in the history of the city, and the area was very important in the town's rope-making industry. For centuries, roughly from the 1500s to the 1700s, the nearby fields were used to grow hemp, which was beaten and softened in dedicated basins on the Via del Mezzomuro, and then carded and processed into rope and fabrics.
In 1764, the Dominicans received permission to divert the water from the well, which at that time they described as "derelict", to a fish pond that they'd created in their adjacent gardens. However, they were forced to block up this diversion when the Augustinians got annoyed because that reduced the flow to
their fountain, which also relied on this water source.
With time, the well was no longer used, to the point that it does not appear on the cities list of viable wells dating to 1836. It appears in the record as an historical well in what amounts to a tourist/history guide that was published in 1856.
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Porta Sant'Antonio, the Via
del Mezzomuro is to the
left just before the gate |
After that, it was completely forgotten until someone happened to be looking at maps in the (closed, archaeological site) church of Santa Maria in Cammuccia. Lodged in the stack of maps, was a cluster of original documents discussing a fight between the Dominicans and the Augustinians over the use of a fountain -- a fountain of which present-day citizens knew nothing! And from this, the search through the records began, culminating in the reopening of the well in December, 2019.
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| Church of Sant'Antonio |
We continue to be amazed by the wealth of history here, as well as the ability of the populace to find information once they know what they're seeking. To have records going back nearly 750 years that describe the location of the well is extraordinary...at least, to us. Here, it's practically mundane.
Love,
Alexandra
