The history of Bivona, an Italian municipality in the province of Agrigento in Sicily, begins with the appearance of the first human settlements in the municipal area dating back to the Copper Age.. Also documented in the Bivona area are settlements from the Greek, late Roman and medieval periods. The town of Bivona, although sometimes believed to be of Islamic origin, is documented from 1160:. first a simple hamlet, then a lordship, it was one of the main feudal centers of the Vallo di Mazara.
In 1554 Emperor Charles V elevated Bivona, the first among Sicilian cities, to the rank of duchy, giving it the title of city;. until 1812, therefore, the town was administered by noble Spanish families (De Luna of Aragon, Moncada, Alvarez de Toledo), which, however, caused its social and economic decline.
Following the abolition of feudalism, Bivona became the capital of a Bourbon district; in 1860, having become part of the Kingdom of Savoy, Bivona filled the role of capital of the district of the same name in the province of Girgenti.
Prehistoric age
Various archaeological findings have confirmed human presence in the Bivona area since the Copper Age (3rd millennium B.C.).
The survey (Agrigent Survey) conducted by the archaeological team led by Professor Johannes Bergemann of the Georg-August University of Göttingen in 2009–2010 uncovered remains of the prehistoric age in the Bivona territory, including a rock necropolis.
The study and analysis of sporadic archaeological finds in the territory of Bivona had previously been carried out mainly by Cesare Sermenghi, author of Missing Minor Worlds and The Past and Its Answers, and by the Bivonese Salvatore Midulla, author of Bivona, the Origins and Early History.
Some Serraferlicchio pottery shards testify to a settlement dating back to the Eneolithic; in a small plateau of modest size, due to the discovery of some pottery belonging to the facies of Sant'Angelo Muxaro, there is evidence of a settlement dating back to the 8th century B.C.,. on the Monte delle Rose overlooking Bivona.
In the former fief of Pollicìa, located a few kilometers west of the town of Bivona, in the municipal territory of Palazzo Adriano, various archaeological finds have been unearthed, including pottery shards of the Serraferlicchio style.
The finds date back to the Copper Age: some sherds are part of a dipper cup, others are part of another cup, painted with dark-gray vertical bands; a lobster-red ceramic tumbler bottom and other relics belonging to objects decorated with latticework were also found. Finally, two large fragments of red pottery were found that were part of a thick and shiny bowl.
Some enclosures, believed to be small tomb structures, were also noted in the area. The abundant presence in the Pollicia district of chalky rock allowed the indigenous peoples the easy exploitation of underground dwellings and mineral deposits of salt, believed to be the first means of exchange between the indigenous Eneolithic civilization and the newly introduced Aegean-Mycenaean one.
Ancient age
Scholarly hypotheses about ancient Bivona A passage from Strabo,Strabo, Geography, book VI. which mentions Hipponium, mistakenly identified with Bivona instead of the city of Vibo Valentia in present-day Calabria, led some 16th-century scholars to place Bivona as the place where, according to the ancients, the mythological rape of Persephone took place..
Also Francesco Maurolico,Francesco Maurolico, Index alphabeticus oppidorum montium et fluviorum Siciliae, 1562: . based on the identification of Hipponium with Bivona, situated there the "place of delights" called "Horn of Amalthea," built by the tyrant Gelon of Syracuse.Francesco Mauriloco quoted a sentence from a Latin translation of the work Deipnosophistai by Athenaeus of Naucratis, itself taken from the History of Agathocles by Duris of Samos: . This identification, already rejected by some seventeenth-century scholars,Agostino Inveges (1651) and Vincenzo Auria (1668) was still revived in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, even up to local scholar Giovan Battista Sedita in the early twentieth century..
A founding of Bivona in the third century B.C. by refugees from the city of Hippana, mentioned by Polybius and Diodorus Siculus and destroyed in 258 B.C., during the First Punic War and from whose name would derive that of Bivona, has also been hypothesized.: the site of Ippana would rather be identifiable with Horse Mountain, at the present-day Prizzi.
Other smaller settlements have also been hypothesized in the vicinity of Bivona: in the seventeenth century, Rocco Pirri, echoing Tommaso Fazello argued that the ancient cities of "Platanello," or Platanella, and "Muzaro," or Muzzaro, would have arisen there.Cesare Sermenghi, a more recent local enthusiast, based on the scarce findings in the districts south of the town, speculated on the existence of the small town of Platanella, which existed between the first century B.C. and the Byzantine era and was later incorporated into Bivona: . According to Marrone (), Platanella would instead be identified with Mount Sara, in the territory of Ribera, a few kilometers from Bivona.
Cesare Sermenghi also speculated. that the Bivonese district of San Matteo was the location of the ancient Sicilian city of Makella, mentioned by Polybius, Diodorus Siculus and Cassius Dio, although there are other hypotheses regarding its location.Other hypotheses of identification of ancient Makella are with the locality of Macellaro, about 20 km from Segesta (TP), in the territory of Camporeale (PA), in the acropolis of Monte Rossomanno, in the territory of Valguarnera Caropepe (EN), in the archaeological area "Montagnola" near Marineo (PA). According to Sermenghi, in turn Makella would have been identifiable with the ancient city of Muzzaro, which is instead identifiable with archaeological remains near Sant'Angelo Muxaro.. Sermenghi also believed that the locality of Adranon, mentioned in the sources as being close to Makella, would have been identifiable with the Rifesi forest in the territory of Palazzo Adriano, near Bivona.Adranon would correspond to the archaeological site of Monte Adranone, near Sambuca di Sicilia (AG) ().
Toponym The similarity of the name Bivona with Hipponium (or Ipponio or Hippana) had already been noted by modern historians, from Aretio to Amico. In 1709 the Jesuit Giovanni Andrea Massa enumerated all the toponymic designations of Bivona, later used by other historiographers. In the 19th century Michele Amari included Bivona in a list of towns in Sicily that, having first been attested to in the Norman period, may have been founded by settlers from central and northern Italy who arrived in Sicily at that time and who would have imposed the names of their city of origin on the new centers: Bivona was paired with Bibbona, a Tuscan town in the province of Livorno: the hypothesis, however, seems untrue, since Bivona was certainly inhabited by Arab people, who settled in Sicily before the coming of the Normans.. In the second half of the 20th century Cesare Sermenghi confirmed the possible derivation of the place name Bivona from Hippana; in his book Mondi minori scomparsi (1981), he stated:.
In 1987, however, the Bivonese Antonino Marrone did not accept the hypothesis put forward a few years earlier by Sermenghi, stating that it does not appear that the evolution of the language of the populations gravitating on the Sicani mountains had until the 12th century made any changes to the name Ippana, not detecting, therefore, a toponymic relationship between Ippana and Bivona; however, he assured that although the village had been during the Middle Ages a pagus Saracenorum (a village inhabited by Muslims), the name Bivona is not of Arab derivation: the village's foundation is therefore to be assumed at a date prior to the invasion of Sicily by the Arabs..
Furthermore, Antonino Marrone noted the existence of several toponyms widespread in antiquity and having the same root as Bivona, but of which there is no documented relationship with other toponyms having Ippo as roots.. The toponyms are:
Bibonicum, promontory near the Black Sea;
Bibonum, mentioned by Tacitus, identified with Bebelingen or Beberinhausen, near the Nicro River;
a Lepontian inscription from Sorengo: Piuonei tekilai pala (Bivoni Decialo lapis);
the aforementioned Tuscan town of Bibbona. Finally, he emphasized the analysis of some historians and linguists who asserted that the ancient name of Calabrian Hipponio (Vibo Valentia) was Vibo, now also preserved in the name of its small hamlet Bivona.
Regarding the etymology of the name of the Calabrian city, the following is what the priest Francesco Albanese wrote in 1962 in his work Vibo Valentia nella sua storia:
The name Bivona is believed to be a name of non-Arabic derivation; it is found in this form for the first time in a document of 1171, although the most frequent form until the early sixteenth century was Bibona. The form Bisbona was most likely first used by Frederick III, in a letter dated 28 September 1363, sent to Giovanni Chiaramonte. This variant is probably due to a learned re-elaboration: in a letter of 1553 it was written:
Again in 1557 an erudite explanation is given:
There is also the form Vivona, now used in the local dialect.
Archaeological sites Archaeological areas Prehistoric settlements Serra di Cuti Pietre Cadute Monte Castelluccio Serra di Caraha Greek settlements Monte Mezzo Canale Pietre Cadute Monte Castelluccio Contrada il Ponte Roman settlements Monte delle Rose Monte Mezzo Canale Monte il Casino Monte Chirullo Vallone Salito Contrada Madonna dell'Olio Maidda Ferraria Pietre Cadute Contrada Millaga Monte Castelluccio Contrada il Ponte Medieval settlements Pizzo San Matteo Vallone Lordo Contrada Margi Maidda Ferraria Monte CastelluccioSettlements of uncertain age Contrada Madonna dell'Olio Montata Baida Contrada Millaga
Medieval Age
Origins of Bivona The oldest document that has come down to us in which Bivona (mentioned as Bibona) is mentioned dates from 1160.The 1160 document consists of a deed of land donation made to the monastery of San Cristofaro (near Prizzi), in which, reporting the boundaries, it is stated usque ad viam que vadit ad Bibonam ("up to the road that goes to Bivona"). In 1171 it is mentioned as a casale.
According to a hagiographic biography of St. Rosalia, published in 1650 by Jesuit Father Francesco Sparacino,The biography would refer what the saint said in several visions to the Benedictine nun Maria Roccaforte: . the saint is said to have lived for five years (from 1149 to 1154) at the Mount of Roses in Bivona, a then uninhabited land and feud of her father Sinibaldo, from where she was removed when the forest in which she lived in hermitage was cut down for the foundation of the city.
In the following 13th century Bivona is mentioned among the centers of the diocese of Agrigento in 1260 and is still mentioned in 1264, in the 1270s, and in 1281.
Alfonso Airoldi and Gaetano Di Giovanni supposed a Byzantine origin of Bivona, the latter also cited by Biagio Pace..
Darptein Taibah: Islamic age
Saracen incursions, which began in Sicily in the seventh century, quickly led to the Arab conquest of the entire island during the ninth century and the formation of the Emirate of Sicily until the expulsion by the Normans in the eleventh century.