The inhabitants of Giffoni have always economically exploited the natural resources from the land, the woods and animal farming offered by their territory.
    The ancient inhabitants that transmigrated from the Plain and populated the various villages scattered at the foot of the mountains already cultivated olive-trees, grapevines and wheat, and, in the areas rich in water, later on also developed rice-growing that soon revealed to be a flourishing activity. In fact rice-growing was already widespread in the Picentine territory since the XII century.
    These prosperous rice-fields, fed by an intricate system of channels for regular distribution of the waters of River Picentino and its tributaries, flourished in the vast districts of Fuorni, San Leonardo, Montecorvino and also Giffoni for many thousands hectares, up to when the Muratiano decree of 1/11/811 prohibited the cultivation of rice.

    If the measures, undoubtedly necessary to save the territory from the plague of malaria, damaged economy on the one hand, on the other hand gave origin to new cultivations, as well profitable: orchards, citrus trees, vineyards, vegetables of various kind, and pleasant gardens, irrigated by a more rational distribution of the waters. However the most opulent period and of maximum splendor for the population of Giffoni is linked to the “industrial” and “commercial” activities that bloomed especially in the XV and XVI centuries.

    Already towards the end of the Middle Ages, in fact, in the area had started to develop different handicraft and commercial activities – like the “art” of wool – that during the following centuries achieved increasing importance. It was above all Hebrews coming fromSalernothat managed, chiefly in Giffoni, pawnshops and industries of raw and refined wool.

    In fact they had practiced – already from the IX century – profitable jobs in our capital, where they had their own district called Giudaica. In the following centuries they affirmed themselves mainly as “bankers”, textile merchants, dyers, skilled craftsmen of domestic utensils and tools necessary for weaving, fishing, agriculture, house-building.

    They had monopoly on butchery and also knew how to tan leather, to manufacture leather bags, used above all to store or transport oil. InSalernothey had been incontestably the greatest contributors of the Church for their influence in the economy of the city and their rich business turnover. When in the XV century, also to escape an excessive fiscal imposition, they determined a Diaspora, they moved with their commercial and handicraft activities to the neighboring towns. Among these they also chose theterritoryofGiffoni.

    In their period of great prosperity they opened thirteen banks in the sole Prepezzano, and demonstrated to be the ablest and most resistant merchants in the territory. So, the art of wool as principal source of wealth, in this area likewise in other towns of theIrnoValleyand theSalernocoast, allowed the rising of a group of rich bourgeois families with important public position, who controlled the commerce of wool even inNaples. The raw material, principally coming from the near Irpinia (Bagnoli and Solofra) or from Apulia (Foggia), was woven, dyed and manufactured in theterritoryofGiffoni, so that the products were called “gephonenses”.

    As the local historian Andrea Sinno has broadly exposed, in the territory of upper Picentino (that includes the towns of Giffoni, Prepezzano, Sieti and San Cipriano) in the sixteenth century there was plenty of sheep farms, source of conspicuous income for many families. Among these, one of the richest families of the time was the well-known Cioffi family. Besides the sheep farm, they owned complete industrial equipment: cellars for wool carding, stores for spinning, fulling-mills for washing, dyeing plants, presses, etc.

    They manufactured simple cloths, suits, and the colored caps (well known as birretti giphonenses diversorum colorum) sold in the whole Kingdom, especially in occasion of the annual local fair that still today takes place on August 15 close to the church of Santa Maria a Vico, and of the Salerno fair in September, where the fabrics – well manufactured and fulled – were easily marketed. Along the water courses of the tributaries of Picentino and Tusciano rivers hemp, flax and silk were also cultivated and used to manufacture principally precious fabrics.

    Silk, interwoven with gold in accordance with the art imported in Giffoni by the Tuscan Masters during the XV century, was used to manufacture precious cloths. Flax fibers were largely used by the nuns of the local monasteries to make altar cloths, and by the mothers for their daughters’ trousseau. Finally hemp was used to make sails and cordage, much required I the whole Province.

    In order to elude customs or the fee due to the vassals for the Jus they exercised on the Drapery Art and buildings, the manufacturers from Giffoni gave their goods to merchants that took care of the sales. Through them, they established contacts and trades with near and far away peoples: Florentines, Sienese, Genoese, Sicilians and even Spanish.

    In the XVI century, precisely during the Consistory of 6 March 1531, the Florentine Giulio de’ Medici – Pope Clement VII (1523 -1534) – on the basis of the report done by the cardinal of Four Crowned Saints Lorenzo Pucci, raised Giffoni to diocese and the church of SS Annunziata in Mercato to Cathedral with the creation of a Chapter, and designated Innico of Avalos, already bishop of Aquino, as its first bishop. However, he never took possession of the diocese that was given to Cardinal Pompeo Colonna for administration.
    But it seems that the new diocese was ignored by the following papal Deeds, so that the bishop of Acerno Colangelo Oliviero, on 4 November 1565, could affirm that “the hamlet of Gauro in Jefuni is spiritually subject to the Episcopal seat of Saint Donato of Acierni, our jurisdiction and possession in the past and present days, while the rest of Jefuni is subject to the Archbishopric of Salerno.”

    The Pontiff had granted the request made by the local vassal Alfonso of Avalos, marquis of Vasto, to himself and to the king Carlo V.
    But, owing first to the reasons put forward by the archbishop of Salerno Cardinal Nicola Ridolfi (1533 -1548), who demonstrated that there were no grounds for creating a new diocese so near to Salerno, moreover a diocese constituted by a conglomeration scattered in a place lacking of historical interest, and subsequently to the vigorous restoring work by Girolamo Seripando (1554 -1563), after a jurisdictional dissent lasted for over twenty years, made the Holy Seat to withdraw from the decision taken.

    An important sign of the florid conditions of Giffoni in the XV and XVI centuries is given by the presence on the area of Masters of Grammar, among whom, however, was transmitted only the name of Giovanni Musefilo from Gubbio (1450-1512). In fact the wealthiest families aspired to give their children an education, also necessary for management of the family entrepreneurial activity, from which they drew their wealth. And exactly the aforesaid humanist, in a plea sent to Charles VIII after his occupation of theKingdomofNaplesin1495, inrequesting confirmation of a concession given to him by the previous feudatories, declared that he had been waiting for it for 20 years.

    Before he accepted the position of Lecturer at the Study of Naples for five years, in Giffoni he had had several pupils besides Marquis Innico of Avalos and his children, for whom he composed the Lectiones Grammaticae; for his sojourn in Giffoni in the documents he was identified as inhabitant of Giffoni (giffonese). In his study, Silvestri also remembers other “three unknown educators” contemporary of Musefilo: “Magister Bernardinus quondam magistri iecti… domus Rencius Marotta ed il nobilis Bactista De Russis”.

    Returning to the economy, besides the fulling-mills and the dyeing plants, along the water courses and in the valleys of Giffoni, other activities had been set up already from the XIV century that soon resulted to be extremely profitable: millstones, mills, series, copper mines, iron mines, brickworks and others.
    This way in the XIV century in Giffoni, San Cipriano Picentino and near towns originated the first capitalistic entrepreneurs, who built their workshops, their drapery stores, vastandere, balchere, fulling mills, dyeing plants, employed labor force and concentrated large part of the craftsmanship and retail of the area in their hands.

    In fact the art of wool in Giffoni brought about – perhaps for the greater variety of the fabrics manufactured, that must have required more complex equipment – concentration of all the merchant activities around the large Drapparia (drapery store). On this, in the XVI century exercised his feudal rights the marquis ofPescara, who had contributed to the business with his own capitals. It was him, towards the end of the previous century, to call to Giffoni the Florentine brothers Gerardo and Filippo Bartoli to teach the art of woolen manufacturing. Such new entrepreneurial class developed and, despite the alternate crises, achieved success in the wholeKingdomofNaplesat least up to the second half of XVII century.

    They proved to possess, besides the means, also and above all great organizational ability and dynamism. The names of the numerous local workers (who however were soon substituted by workers coming from the neighboring towns) that dedicated themselves to the profitable art of wool – especially financially – are all meticulously recorded, on the basis of ancient notarial deeds industriously consulted and reported, by Sinno in his work. But then the capitals, previously invested to make the industrial equipments more efficient and to increase the business turnover, were diverted towards safer, even though less profitable assets like properties, chestnut woods, vineyards or olive groves, or in banking activities, like in the case of the public bankers Rinaldo and Citarella at the end of XVI century.

    So, the sixteenth century in particular was the period of greater success and economic prosperity for Picentines as well as the time of the greatest importance for those urban centers that today constitute the communes of Giffoni, San Cipriano and Castiglione.

    Later, the political and governmental disorders, the struggles among central power, barons and Communes, with the addition of other calamities like famines, pestilences and the competition of other workshops more advanced technologically that were rising in the different European Countries, as well as brigandage, caused decline and economic collapse for these industrious populations, who returned in the shade.
    Especially the technological progress, the concentration of capitals in the hands of firms with wide financial possibilities, the creation of new production systems, had easy advantage upon the more modest family businesses that had been numerous in our Province and that had given wealth and comfort to large part of the population.

    Of no use were the Bourbons’ reformist attempts, who intended to facilitate trade by improving the road network and paternalistically favoring resumption of the handicraft activities. Meanwhile, if in the first half of nineteenth century arrived to Salerno the Eschers and the Wenners, with their modern textile machinery, their great turbines, their dozens of thousands spindles, the hundreds workers, throwing into crisis the local entrepreneurs who – along the valley of Irno – directed their workshops with the homely manpower of an abundant woolen proto-industry, in Giffoni the copper industry still experienced a certain success; but then here too the manufacturing circumstances suddenly became very critical: production and number of workshops decreased till they completely died at the end of the century.

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