Walking through the streets of the town centre, you may have noticed a series of coats of arms on the façade of a building, these are those of the ancient families of Predazzo, the owners of the “Fiefdom”: Boninsegna, Bonora, Bosin, Brigadoi, Defrancesco, Degaudenz, Dellagiacoma, Dellantonio, Dellasega, Demartin, Dezulian, Felicetti, Gabrielli, Giacomelli, Guadagnini, Morandini, Nicolao, Piazzi and Zanna.
The building, built in 1875 and restored in 2008, is the House of the “Feudal Rule”(La Regola Feudale). The Regola Feudale of Predazzo, is a collective property body, a ‘vicinia’, dating back to 1447. It is considered a private society of ‘neighbours’ who exercise their right as co-owners.
For a long time, the area of Predazzo was relatively sparsely inhabited and isolated.
Predazzo is in fact one of the youngest villages in the valley and today the most populous in the Fiemme Community. It is certain that around the 16th century, there were no more than thirty dwellings and, according to various scholars (Vanzetta, Delvai and others), the anomalous origin of the settlement is just as certain, different from other Fiemme centres, also proven by dialectal forms with different roots.
Realising the risk of marginalisation from the political life of the area, the inhabitants of Predazzo tried, since ancient times, to manage their territory autonomously.
In 1111 the Prince-Bishop of Trento, Gebardo, officially confirmed the legal existence of the Community of Fiemme by signing an agreement with the inhabitants. The “Patti Gebardini” thus recognised the administration of certain assets and a patrimony consisting of water, pastures, woods and fields to the inhabitants of the valley.
Mount Vardabe, whose use was claimed by the inhabitants of Predazzo, was not, however, contemplated. Recognition of the territory did not occur until 1318, when the Regola Generale of Predazzo formalised the enjoyment of the mountain for both cattle grazing and timber cutting; the Community of Fiemme then formalised its exclusive pertinence in 1388.
A little later, in 1391, it was the Prince-Bishop of Trento George of Liechtenstein who officially invested Mount Vardabe in favour of the Regola Generale of Predazzo. This investiture was ‘renewed’ by subsequent prince-bishops until the secularisation of the principality in 1803.
In 1608, the 71 ‘original’ families of Predazzo decided to set up the ‘Regola del monte Vardabe’ (Rule of Mount Vardabe), i.e. an association completely separate and distinct from the general £”Rule of Predazzo” and endowed with its own statute: the “Capituli et ordeni fatti per li vicini del monte feudali Guardaben”.
The statute, approved by prince-bishop Carlo Gaudenzio Madruzzo on 9 April 1615, underwent numerous amendments over the following centuries, not all of which are documented in the archives. With this first statute, a group of inhabitants of Predazzo therefore became a class within the social body of the town. The need was to distinguish themselves from the ever more numerous ‘outsiders’ in the Alpine area, so open and mobile. But it is conceivable that the distinction also had value in relation to the emerging class in the valley and in particular in the most eminent centre, Cavalese, with the danger that it could assume a predominant role. For this reason, only the inhabitants of Predazzo who held the historical surnames of the town and were the only ones who could hand down the “vicinia” by male line according to hierarchical right were considered ‘neighbors’.
The 1608 statute and all subsequent ones also specified the other requisites one had to possess to be recognised as a ‘neighbour’. The undoubted economic advantages linked to the status of neighbour of the feudal Regola di Predazzo offered sufficient grounds for disputes by those who did not accept the exclusion.
In more recent times, the existence of the feudal Rule of Predazzo, like that of the Community of Fiemme, was seriously threatened by two different regulations that intervened to regulate the functioning of the rules on the one hand and civic uses on the other.
In the first case, it was the sovereign resolution of 4 January 1807 abolishing the so-called ‘Major and Minor Regolanies’. This legislation had immediate repercussions on the life of feudal rule. Later, the administrative reform of the French period for the first time raised the risk of the incorporation of the feudal Regola within the newly established municipal body. In 1814, however, Councillor Riccabona reassigned full legitimacy to the feudal Regola, recognising it as ‘a different and distinct corporation’ from that formed by the Municipality of Predazzo.
The second regulation was an Italian law of 1927 that introduced new provisions on civic uses with the aim of bringing greater uniformity to a series of legal traditions. The dispute was only concluded in 1967 when, instead of liquidation in favour of the municipality of Predazzo, it was decided to recognise the private nature of the Regola Feudale. Apart from a couple of more recent cases, throughout its existence, the sovereignty of the Regola was recognised by all the Emperors and Prince-Bishops of Trento.
The Regola Feudale has thus come down to the present day practically intact and can be defined as a private law property consisting today of about 800 ‘Vicini’ who look after the ancient agro-sylvo-pastoral heritage, approximately 2700 hectares of inalienable, indivisible, inusucaptible land.
On 11 November, St Martin’s Day, we celebrate this special privilege: on this day, in fact, each member still collects a portion of the last proceeds from the management of the forest, known as a ‘regalia’ (the gift). What do the celebrations include? Well..that’s another story!