 Very
often one thinks of boundaries as a line that separates two realities, be
it states, communities, or other. An imaginary line, sometimes linked to
natural obstacles such as mountains or rivers, and often linked to political
and human events. In reality, as many historians as Lucien Febvre have taught
us, mountains, rivers and forests, although they are dividing points, they
are also "centres in evolution and expansion, small worlds with their
own value and able to attract and bond closely men and places" (L.Febvre,
The Earth and Human Evolution, Turin 1980).
The border which runs along the ridge of the Apennines north of the territory
of Pistoia can well be considered an example for this point of view. It
is of course a natural obstacle, which has divided something for at least
the past 2000 years (the old roman districts, the dioceses, the medieval
settlements or the modern districts of Modena, Bologna, Pistoia and Prato.
However, as outlined by Renzo Zagnoni and Febvre, it is a boundary that
was never really clean-cut or impossible to breach, but almost the opposite
as the populations from both sides were always in close contact and had
constant rapport also socially". (R. Zagnoni, A 200 year-long boundary,
in the Apennine borders: perception and reality from the past to now, by
P. Foschi and R. Zagnoni, Bologna 2001).
In many areas of these borders, at times identified in the crest pathways,
thereby marking a watershed between the waters of the Tyrrhenian and Adriatic
seas, or is in some way connected to the Grande Escursione Appenninica (GEA),
a strip of the "Sentiero Italia" route, the natural obstacles
really are insurmountable and display a tangible idea of an inevitable separation.
Yet, taking a closer look, this is only the most obvious point of view,
and by far the most important one in reality, as in almost any frontier,
there are many traces and signs of continuity and contact between the two
areas it separates one from another. Traces that one can still look for
and find not only in the area but also in the documents left us in the archives
and libraries by the inhabitants of the mountains and past governing entities.
Thus, the cartographic history, which often - as in the beautiful tables
of Luder which are preserved in the Archives of the State of Florence, published
nearly 20 years ago by the Pistoia city hall - also have great esthetical
value, present us a world, that of the mountains, strongly integrated and
more importantly; influenced, by many common aspects: from dispersed places
populated by mankind to the variety of woodlands and the fields, used as
pastures, (L.Rombai, G.C. Romby, L'appennino pistoiese nelle vedute pittoriche
di Giovanni Luder (1711), Pistoia 1987). So, the prospective on the borders,
followed by different governments, end up with similar episodes and, more
importantly, view the territory in the same way, with its landscapes, its
rivers, and its pathways. (C. Vivoli, The mountiain of Pistoia during the
administrative visits of the 17th and 18th centuries, "Nuèter",
XXIX, 2003). The literature - from its folklore to its poetry and song -
tells of a genuine world, that of the mountain folk, who had to endure grave
difficulties and sacrifices, and were greatly influenced by seasonal immigration
and poverty.
 It is important
to bear in mind, on this subject, the short stories and the places of Beatrice
Bugelli, the shepherd poetess of Pian degli Ontani or the mythical lands
of the Orsigna in "ultimo amore" of Tiziano Terzani, and his homage
to this "wild" world, to these "strange" people, capable
of "understanding the soul like no others can" and of "giving
life, with only a name and a legend, to every rock, to every pond";
a people "without history" who only attribute their origins to
a disperse company of adventurous soldiers or to those "illegal merchants
who, in this inaccessible valley, and border area between the Papal State
and the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, slipped out of paying taxes to the Gabellette
(a place having this very same name) and climbed the mountain to an impervious
area called, rightly, Porta Franca" (Tiziano Tersani, In Asia, Milano,
1998).
But what are the most significant aspects that, in some way identify a borderline
area, especially that of a mountain: the roads leading to the passes, and
along these, the rest areas and the hospices, and, generally, the shelters
for travelers, but the customs and other inspection offices as well, in
our case, more commercial rather than military, given the neutrality of
Tuscany, at least in the last century (P. Bellucci, History of a road: two
centuries of the mountain pass of Abetone, Abetone, Abetone-Pistoia 1980;
C.Cresti, The Tuscany of the Lorena. Territorial and architectural policies,
Firenze 1987). As Charles Whickam points out, we are, in fact, facing a
complex orthographic and idiographic system "geographically slightly
disarticulated", in which the unifying element is represented exclusively
by the distance from the city (C.Wickham, The mountain and the city. The
medieval Tuscan Apennine, in ladnscapes of the Apennine, by C. Greppi, Venezia
1990). The orthographic complexity of the valleys of Lima, Reno and the
other small rivers that flow in the plains around Pistoia have not held
the city back from maintaining its control of a great part of the mountains,
not only until the Florentine conquest in the XIV century, but, although
in different ways, till much later, at least till the reforms of the second
half of the 17th century.
 This sort
of control produced, in the course of the centuries, a considerable mole
of various documents: from inspective visits to the state of the woodlands,
which were so important for the timber industry, to construction projects
and then infrastructural maintenance of the roads, from population censuses
to the description of city hall properties, not to mention the regular descriptions
of borderline visits which per done periodically by the offices of the frontier
city halls. Visits to the frontiers, at the end of the 17th century when,
after a stipulated convention between the Grand Duke of Tuscany and the
Church State, all on the borderline was first described in the big border
"termination", first on paper, with abundant production of maps
and layouts by the engineers of both states and counterparts represented
by the same, then on the land itself, using cylinder terminals placed at
short distances one from another.
These very milestones, which symbolised the organized convention of the
study group Alta Valle del Reno and the Società Pistoiese di Storia
Patria in 200 at Capugnano near Porretta Terme in Il confine appeninico:
percezione e realtà dell'eta antica ad oggi, represent the unifying
element of this itinerary proposal which suggest to search for the ancient
borders, preserving their existence and memory. |
