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EGADI: LIFE LIVED


prehistoric period

The events that occurred in very ancient times are unknown.
In the Odyssey (Book IX), Homer´s Ulysses arrive in the island of goats (Aegades) and describes the characters natural with such clarity that the similarity to the island of Favignana succeeds perfect.
It is believed that the first inhabitants of Sicily (Trinacria) were the Phoenicians (sailors) and Lestrigoni (farmers) came from Epirus by sea. They lived in Favignana probably in caves of which there are traces in the vicinity of St. Nicholas.

Sicani, Sicilians, Cumani

The Sicani populated the Trinacria around 1200 BC The island took the name of Sicania and then Sicily with the coming of the Sicilians from the valley of the Tiber.
Legend has it that in that period Theban Hercules founded in the valley of Lilibeo the city of Mozia where he left a Phoenician colony. It is thought that these Phoenicians also took up residence in Favignana (Katria).
Sicily was then occupied by the corsairs of Cuma. These were the first Greeks who set foot on the island and prevented their coming of other peoples.
The Athenians in 415 BC sent a powerful fleet in Sicily under the command of Nicio Lamachus. The intervention to protect against the aggressions of Segesta and Selinunte Syracuse masked the intent to conquer the island.
He fought with ups and downs and so Sicily was not subjected to domination domineering, the Sicilians called for help the Carthaginians.

Trinacria

Carthaginian period
The Carthaginians around the year 400 BC began the invasion of Sicily, fully accomplished, except for Syracuse and Messina, strongholds defended by Mamertines. It ´very likely that the Carthaginians have come to form a small colony in Favignana, for it, with Mozia, constituted a kind of vanguard of Sicily.
The defeat of the Carthaginians in the First Punic War (264-241 BC) left a historical record in Favignana.
The year 250 BC the notice of the siege of the Carthaginian Senate Lilibeo by Consoli CARegolo and LMVulso and efforts of Captain Imileone to prevent the entrance to the Roman city, sent to rescue men and wheat by means of fifty ships under the command Hannibal. These directed the fleet to Favignana and from this island to sail forced the lock of the enemy besieging the Lilibeo.
In 246 BC commanded by Hanno the Carthaginian fleet was stationed at the island of Hiera (Marettimo) to take advantage of the wind and run on Trapani to free the army of Hamilcar Barca stuck on Mount Erice.
Near Favignana the Carthaginian fleet was intercepted and destroyed by the Roman: the First Punic War ended with the peace concluded in 241 BC .
Even in the Second Punic War (219-201 BC) the waters of Favignana were the scene of several battles and remained famous breasts of Cala Rossa in Favignana for the shelter offered to the Roman ships.

Roman period

Destroyed Carthage, Sicily became a Roman province and was oppressed and exploited by the magistrates who succeeded.
MTCicerone then quaestor in Sicily, made several speeches in the Senate, condemning the conduct of the magistrate C.Licinio Verre.
During the Roman Empire and under the rule of tyrants, emperors, Favignana saw his first prisons, which were made up of a system of caves.
At that time there was no building on the island (and not existed until the seventeenth century): the few inhabitants lived in caves like troglodytes.

period Saracen

After the fall of the Roman Empire, Sicily was invaded by the Saracens. They were Arabs of African origin who came to the island in the early ninth century, made themselves masters of Sicily in the ´878 with the capture and burning of Syracuse.
The despotic rule of the Saracens led early Sicily in great misery for the greed of the emirs who ruled.
At Favignana, in relation to the ruins that still advancing, it is believed that in the area of the tower had to be a tower manufactured by the Saracens to ensure the island from invasion and that the same period are the towers transformed after castles of St. Catherine and S. Leonardo. These were to form the defenses of the Saracens and they had to originate the coat of arms of Favignana: three towers on which rests a bird of prey (the enemy).
The Saracens were completely expelled from Sicily in 1090 by the Normans.

Norman period

The Normans (Northmen) subdued Sicily diffondendovi feudalism.
At Favignana this rule does not have any track.
Roger, King of the Normans, did turn two of the three towers in fortresses (St. Catherine and St. Leonard). He built also the fortress of St. James and did not care Torretta divisando the island well defended.
The Normans in Sicily reigned for 134 years.

the Swabians

The Swabians reigned in Sicily from 1195 until 1268, when the last scion (Conradin) was beheaded in the Market Square (now Carmine) in Naples.

the Angevins

Off the Swabians, the kingdom was conquered by the Anjou. During the reign of Charles of Anjou, the ferocious soldiers of Provence, in command of the French barons, perpetrated a systematic plundering in Sicily. The island was abandoned arbitrariness of its rulers that the oppressed with taxes and levies.
In a rock of Trapani, commonly called "the bad advice", gathered after secret agreements, the Trapani Palmerio Abate, Lord of Favignana and Carini, Giovanni da Procida, Alaimo from Lentini, lord of Ficarra, Gualtiero from Caltagirone and other few magnates of the island, to treat to bring down the government Angevin.
They intended to offer the crown to Peter III, King of Aragon and husband of Constance, daughter of Manfredi, namely those that Conradin before his death had indicated as legitimate successors of the crown of the Kingdom of Sicily.
The March 31, 1282 occurred Vespers.

the Aragonese

Past the kingdom to Peter of Aragon, Palmerio Abate had confirmed the Lordship of Favignana. He was succeeded by his brothers Nicholas and Richard Abate. These, with the privilege of Peter of Aragon gave Messina November 29, 1341, were granted, together with the domain of Favignana, the right to provide the said island of two traps, calling the one of San Leonardo and the other of S .Nicolò.
All rights on the island were lost with the confiscation in 1397 and Favignana, forfeited before the state property of the Royal Curia, then passed with all its appurtenances under the Lordship of Aloisio de Dearest from Trapani. Since 1416 Sicily began to be ruled by the Spanish viceroys. Since then, the island was troubled by insurgencies, gallows, imprisonment and robbery due to bad government. Sicily also in this period suffered greatly for piracy of the Moors. To combat the raids of pirates was given orders to build watchtowers and castles in the vicinity of the beaches. At Favignana Andrea Riccio (Dearest) around 1498 remade again in the castle of St. Catherine and that of St. James.
In 1516 Hugo of Moncada, former viceroy in Sicily, under the command of a naval intended to stem the constant raids of pirates of Africa, after a bitter battle against the Turkish fleet, he was surprised by a strong storm and took refuge, with more than 14,000 men, in Favignana there completing severe looting.
Favignana was assigned in 1590 by Philip II to the barons Filingeri.
Towards the middle of the seventeenth century the island belonged to the Genoese Giacomo Brignoni, and finally the Royal Court under the government of Philip III sold it, the April 11, 1640, along with Marettimo and Levanzo with traps and the Lordship of the Sea of Pigs for the price of 500 thousand crowns to Camillo Pallavicino.
Egadi privilege of King Philip III on March 22, 1651 were erected in the County under the title of Favignana.
In 1688 the royal family saw fit to review the contract of sale of the islands to the fact Pallavicino, especially to preserve the direct rule of the castles and fortresses of Favignana and Marettimo.
The latter fact attached great importance to the defense of the island, and in the act of transition that followed he reserved all rights on them forcing Pallavicino not to make concessions enfiteutiche land without the approval of the Royal Court. This clause had to order to prohibit arise buildings opposite the castle of St. James that togliessero the view of the sea and the free throws away the guns.
In consequence of this intention the new parish church of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, present Madrice, was manufactured on the corner and not at the center of the square.
It was built by the Pallavicino instigation of the king, which is contained in the act of transcription, as the ancient parish of St. James in the castle of the same name was no longer sufficient, since the growth of the population. This church, completed in 1764, was elevated to the dignity of Arcipretura.
The domination of the Spanish lasted for more than four centuries, leaving many tracks around the island.

The Bourbons

In 1735 the infant Charles of Bourbon, the cunning of his mother Elisabetta Farnese, wife of Philip V, sat on the throne of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.
We note the conduct of the Bourbon kings and the prisons of Favignana and Marettimo are valid evidence.
In 1858 were imprisoned in the castle of St. Catherine Giovanni Nicotera with other members of the ill-fated expedition led by Carlo Pisacane Sapri.
William Pepper, general uprisings of 1820, he was imprisoned in the pit of Marettimo.
In 1874 Vincenzo Florio took possession of the Egadi islands and their seas buying them by the Marquis Pallavicini Rusconi. With this purchase had only the bare ownership of them and traps, with the exclusion of the castles and the state-owned land, having been abolished feudal rights and investitures first permitted.
The buildings in Favignana began to rise with the concessions enfiteutiche Pallavicino before and after Florio, and they developed from the beginning in the district of St. Anne.