The House of the Bourbon di Sorbello marquises (full title: Bourbon del Monte di Sorbello) is a noble family originating in the early Middle Ages, the holder until 1819 of the imperial fief of Sorbello, entering among the ranks of the oligarchy of the city of Perugia in the 18th century.
The Family's origins The Sorbello were a branch of the family of the Monte Santa Maria (later known as Bourbon del Monte) marquises, which broke off from the main line in the second half of the 15th century, exercising its rule over a territory at the border between the Papal States and Tuscany: the marquisate of Sorbello. This fief was originally a detached offshoot of the main family's possessions, but it was then granted by the Marquis Cerbone, regent of Monte Santa Maria, to his brother Lodovico (1394-1441) who established his residence there, becoming the first lord of Sorbello.Ugo Barberi, I Marchesi bourbon del Monte S. Maria, di Petrella e di Sorbello. Notizie storico-genealogiche sulla casa fino ai giorni nostri, Città di Castello, Tipografia Unione Arti grafiche, 1943, p. 101. See also: Angelo Ascani, Monte Santa Maria e i suoi Marchesi, Città di Castello, 1978, p. 103.
Despite its very small size ("one mile in length and three in circumference," according to the description of Lorenzo Vibi, last vicar of the fiefdomArchivio di Stato di Perugia (ASPG), Bourbon di Sorbello, b. 13, f. 9. From the description of the fief of Sorbello given by Lorenzo Vibi in 1819 we learn that "Most of the land is mountainous and wooded, the only flat area is that of the valley floor close to the Niccone river, but it is continually prone to flooding, which makes the maintaining of the levees costly and useless. Factories and workshops are lacking, if we don't count the traditional workings of a kiln, a grain mill and an oil mill […] The fief of Sorbello has never been subject to any imposition, from time immemorial, either personal or royal; on the contrary, those miserable inhabitants have always enjoyed advantages in the price of salt, and in the growing of tobacco for their own use and consumption."Francesco Guarino, L'archivio Bourbon di Sorbello: una fonte non solo per la memoria familiare, in Biblioteche nobiliari e circolazione del libro tra Settecento e Ottocento. Atti del convegno nazionale di studio, Perugia, Palazzo Sorbello, 29-30 giugno 2001, edited by Gianfranco Tortorelli, Bologna, Pendragon, 2002, pp. 336-337.), the marquisate of Sorbello had the dignity of being an imperial fiefdom: this is a territory formally subject to the Holy Roman Empire, whose feudal lords claimed their own autonomy of government, recognizing the emperor as the only higher authority. The feudal rights with which they were invested concerned the possibility of waging war against neighbors for territorial disputes or honor issues (ius gladii), civil and criminal jurisdiction, the collecting of various taxes and duties, and the right to coin money (ius faciendi monetam). The feudal lord could also appropriate fines or property left vacant by heirs or confiscated from criminals. Also very important was the right to grant asylum; in other words, the possibility of taking in and protecting anyone, even if persecuted or wanted by police forces, within the limits of their own territory.
The castle of Sorbello: from medieval fort to ceremonial residence The castle of Sorbello,The name "Sorbello", which originally would have come from a local cultivation of sorb trees, took on a new imaginative meaning in the 17th century, creating a learned derivation from the Latin expression sorte belli ("by fortune of war"). the original residence of the Bourbon di Sorbello marquises, is at present the fruit of a many years of expansions and structural changes that followed one another almost continuously from the second half of the 15th to the end of the 19th century.
The first fortress is a very old structure, dating back to the early 11th century. Part of the original structure can still be seen, looking at the façade of the castle, on the left side of the walls, looking northeast, starting from the old main tower, or keep, which is still standing today. Inside, some fragments of the original structure still remain, easily recognizable in the area of the old courtyard. Until the late 14th century, this stronghold was first a border fort of the central fief of the del Monte marquises, and later of a branch of the family that settled in nearby Civitella (known as the "Civitella dei Marchesi").
Together with the castle of Reschio, another old fortress that once belonged to the del Monte marquises, Sorbello closed off the Niccone valley, forming a boundary for the territories belonging to this family. The new seat did not begin to establish itself until the beginning of the 15th century, with the settlement in Sorbello of a branch of the Bourbon del Monte from the main Monte Santa Maria line, in the person of the Marquis Lodovico, following the destruction of the Civitella dei Marchesi fortress and all its feudal lords (which took place with an assault by the troops of Città di Castello on July 22, 1416).
The first to actually enlarge and modernize the structures of the original medieval fortress was the Lodovico's son, the Marquis Regent Gianmatteo I († 1483). The keep and the minor towers (of which two remain) were left as intact, but new cylindrical towers were built during the 15th century.
Further works done in the 17th century altered the shape of the castle as it must have appeared in the 15th and 16th centuries: with the increasing use of artillery in the 16th century, it was decided to build an embankment that still surrounds the castle, with walls characterized by star-shaped bastions. The bastions were safeguarded by watchtowers, which were named after the saints to whom the nearby churches were dedicated (e.g. the Sant'Andrea watchtower, named after the church in the small village of Sant'Andrea di Sorbello).
In the first half of the 17th century the castle underwent significant modifications, carried out during the time of the marquises Lodovico III (1575-1640) and Uguccione I (1578-1660): the entire part around the main courtyard was demolished and rebuilt, leaving only a portion of the external pediment intact on the north side of the castle.
In following with the new times, in which the fief of Sorbello – wedged between the Papal States and the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, both now firmly established as states, Sorbello no longer feared either assaults or sieges – Sorbello was to be turned into a ceremonial palace, also to give luster to its maintaining of feudal independence. The old building was gutted to create a monumental entrance hall, so as to ensure convenient access to carriages. In the oldest part of the building, the old irregular and partly rounded walls were squared to obtain a staircase of honor. Behind this structure a long herringbone interstice between the old wall and the 17th-century wall shows the line of the old perimeters.
The keep or great tower was spared, as were the quarters that arose with the small tower around the older courtyard and the adjoining 15th-century vaulted rooms, along with the small prisons in the castle that remained buried under the new staircase, intact with their old entrance and lone barred window overlooking the courtyard. The "shelf" remained intact on the old northeast walls, upon which was set the cage in which prisoners were put on display. The new wing consisted of large halls whose ceilings with decorated wooden beams replaced the original vaulted ceilings of the old rooms. A large chapel dedicated to St. Andrew was created below the large reception hall in the west wing, overlooked by choirs and decorated with altars in white stucco.
In the 18th century a new project was conceived to modify the structure, with the aim of transforming the original, albeit greatly changed, design of the old castle into a modern country villa. The works for this umpteenth transformation proceeded slowly, but succeeded in partly demolishing the western bastion around the castle with the idea of creating in its place a series of descending terraces to be arranged as a garden, a project that never came to fruition: the Marquis Regent Lodovico V (1679-1748) instead chose to build a villa for the members of his family on the hills surrounding Lake Trasimeno, a more favorable location mainly because of its milder climate. Shortly after 1720, he thus began the construction of a large villa in Pischiello sopra Passignano, now known as Villa del Pischiello, abandoned any idea of converting the old Sorbello fortress into a villa.
Other works were carried out in the 19th century to recuperate part of the structures ruined following 18th-century projects.
Land ownership, business enterprises and smuggling The mere exercising of feudal privileges on the tiny fief of Sorbello was certainly not enough to guarantee economic stability, which was based mainly on the substantial land rents from the many lands owned by the marquises in Umbria and Tuscany. In the two centuries starting from the early 17th century, the Sorbello marquises transacted numerous purchases and exchanges, with the aim of expanding their possessions in the Lake Trasimeno area and in the Niccone stream and Tiber River valleys, through a process of the consolidation and amalgamation of the properties and the earmarking the land into estates, most of which were managed through a long-term leasing system.
The fief of Sorbello was converted into an estate of about 750 hectares, managed by tenants: although it was not the most profitable part of their holdings, it was nevertheless very useful, thanks to the sovereign right that the family had been able to maintain on the fief. Indeed, Sorbello emerged as a vast zone for smuggling between Umbria and Tuscany, the importance of which grew significantly when the Grand Duchy of Tuscany adopted a free trade policy for the grain trade. After the severe famine that afflicted Italy from 1764 to 1767, while some Italian states, such as the Papal States, gave more power to their respective food offices, in Tuscany the Grand Duchy abolished them, favoring a rise in prices and, consequently, the illegal importing of grains from Umbria.In 1793 the governor of Arezzo considered the fief of Sorbello, which was outside of papal authority, a virtually safe stopover for smugglers. See Augusto Ciuffetti, Una proprietà nobiliare tra dinamiche patrimoniali e strategie dinastiche: il caso dei Bourbon di Sorbello tra XVII e XIX secolo, in "Proposte e Ricerche", a. XVII, vol. 33, summer-autumn, s.l., s.n., 1994, pp. 9-42.
The Bastia Creti estate, an area adjoining that of the fief, belonged to the family property. Added to this economic context was the Pischiello estate, located within the present-day area of the municipality of Passignano sul Trasimeno. The central core of this estate, Bastia Corgna, was purchased in 1697 by the monastery of the Beata Vergine of Rome; the grand Pischiello villa was built there in the 18th century, and was owned by the family until the 20th century. Other estates held by the family were those of Migianella and Montone, to which were added those of San Lazzaro di Fratta and Belforte di Norcia in the 18th century, enjoyed by the family as a commandery of the Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus. Lastly, in the early 19th century, the extremely profitable marriage of Giuseppe II di Sorbello with Altavilla Oddi brought in a large estate near San Martino in Colle, in the Perugia area, as a dowry.