By discussing the mountains and the mines of the Venetian Republic, Sergio Tazzer reveals the historical paths that lead beyond the Alps, into Bohemia
(Il battitore di monete, Chiesa di Santa Barbara, Kutná Hora)
The bonds between Italy and Bohemia in the mining sector are many, and the book “Canòpi e nobilomeni. Storia e miniere nell’Agordino”, by the journalist and writer Sergio Tazzer (published by Kellermann Editore), just re-published in its second edition – offers a number of examples of particular interest. The volume focuses on the history of the mines in Agordino, a territory of Belluno which for four centuries, from 1420 onwards, found itself under the rule of the Venetian Republic and was therefore inextricably linked its fate.
This mountainous area of upper Veneto, before being under Venetian control, already had a “dynastic” connection with Bohemia, dating back to 1350, when after various vicissitudes and noble ties, Agordino came under the control of the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, the Bohemian Charles IV. But his role grew quickly, with the Lion of St. Mark.
“Agordo and all the surrounding area between the mountains of Belluno, were of fundamental importance for the Serenissima, as it provided metals and minerals of strategic importance to its Arsenal and its Mint”, says the author. The mines are mostly those of the Imperina Valley, the important deposit a few miles from Agordo that since the 15th century has provided iron, silver, copper, zinc, lead and mercury to the Republic of Venice. The glorious history of these mines was completed in 1962 and the site is now the centre of a major work of renovation and architectural and cultural protection.
The research carried out by Tazzer was also a result of his desire to trace the origins of his family name. On this path, he discovered that his ancestor, Sebastian, the founder of Tazzers in Veneto, was also one of the many miners who arrived in Agordino six centuries ago from the Bohemian city of Kutná Hora. Sebastian and all his fellow workers were called “canòpi”, a name which is not random, since it derives from the German Bergknappen, ie miners.
At this point, it is necessary to make a clarification: Kutná Hora (Hory Kutné in the Middle Ages), which under the Habsburg rule bore the name of Kuttenberg, was a city of German culture and tradition. It remained so until the early decades of the last century and on the eve of the Second World War, when in the current Kutná Hora, two-thirds of households claimed to be German speaking. This is also the reason why even today in the dialect of Agordino, several words of Germanic origin have remained.
It turns out that, in this area of Veneto, there are many families with the same origins of Tazzer, such as the Andrichs, the Dell’Osbels, the Ganzes, the Mottes family, the Zaises, and many others.
“Of particular interest at that time, and we are talking about five centuries ago, was the crossing of the mountain culture of Belluno with the miners who had come from Kuttenberg, as well as other German mining sites. At first, they were viewed with suspicion by the locals. Among other things, they were people who had come from areas of the Counter-reformation, and this particularly led the Church, who then were fully intent on combatting heresy, to look upon them with suspicion. The “canòpi” however did not take long to marry and in general to integrate”, said Tazzer, who does not fail to point out that the “canòpi” from Bohemia were those who we today call “skilled workers”, people with very specific skills that did not fail to enrich the work culture of Agordino.
(Church of St. Barbara in Kutná Hora)
Their transfer dates to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, a period in which, with the religious wars in Central Europe, the conditions of many artisans and workers of the mines of Bohemia and Saxony (the most important of the time) got worse. It was precisely the reason that prompted them to go down south in search of better conditions.
“Venice then was responsible, particularly for the sea and knew little of the earth. The “nobilomeni”, the Venetian ruling class, however, were not unprepared and immediately opened the door, I am speaking of the fifteenth century, to those who knew more in terms of Mining, namely the Bergknappen who came from Bohemia. The “nobilomeni”, of Venice knew the importance that a state could have from the possession and utilization of mines. For the Serenissima the mines of Agordino indeed proved to be fundamental”.
The skills of the miners in Bohemia, after all, were well known in Europe at the time. Kutná Hora, by the end of the thirteenth century, the time of King Wenceslas II, was already the most important mining center of the kingdom. It was here where in 1300, the coin “the Prague groschen”, was minted, a coin which remained important in the continent for at least two and a half centuries. Kutná Hora is also the city where they minted the first thaler coins, which were among the most prevalent and important in Europe and with slight deviations in the name, came to be called the dollar, first in Scotland and, from 1792, in the United States. A particular episode helps us find out how the most powerful currency in the world, has its forebears in Bohemia, in a town that now remains of central importance to anyone facing the world and the history not only of the numismatics, but also of the mining and metallurgy in Europe.
Regarding the relations between Bohemia and the Peninsula, the mint of Kutná Hora was called “The Italian Court”, Vlašsky dvůr, a homage to its Italian craftsmen and the Florentine directors (Rinieri, Appardo de Nigromonte and Cino) who came to work there in that period of splendor. It was in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when the mines around the city became the main source of revenue of the kings of Bohemia. The city obtained many privileges as a reward, so as to become the most important Bohemian city after Prague in the fifteenth century.
Tazzer’s book tells us of the events of the Serenissima (Most Serene Republic of Venice) and its hinterland, by citing a number of other people and events marking the relationship between Italy and Bohemia. One example is the jurist Gozzo of Orvieto, to whom the king Wenceslas II entrusted the task of drafting the code of the Ius regale montanorum,which remained the basis of any legislation in the mining sector in Europe for centuries.
Finally another curiosity, a reference to an Italian mine owned by the Schwarzenbergs, a historical Czech family of German blood, who became powerful precisely because of mining activities. From Tazzer’s book we learn that up to 1917, this family were the owners of a mine on Mount Amiata in Tuscany, called precisely, Solforate Schwarzenberg.
Another small tile of the large mosaic on the historical, economic and cultural relationship between the two countries.
by Giovanni Usai & Giuseppe Picheca
About the author
Sergio Tazzer lives in Treviso, where he was born in 1946. Working as a journalist, he was also director of RAI for the Veneto branch, and chief editor of the editorial office of Trentino and the main office of the TGR in Rome. With Rai he invented, maintained and conducted, from 1995 to July 2011, the weekly radio show Central-european East West, broadcast on Radio1 Rai. Also an essayist, he published Piave and its surroundings 1917-1918 (Publisher Kellermann 2011), Tito and the Italians who remained. The defense of Italian identity in Istria, Rijeka and Dalmatia (Leg); Tragic Prague. Milada Horáková. June 27, 1950 (Leg) The boys of Ninety nine (Kellermann, 2012).