Áudio tour 3. From the episcopal supremacy to the Unification of Italy

From the episcopal supremacy to the Unification of Italy.

In 1263, the city of Vicenza granted the possessions of Calvene to the Church of Vicenza, which installed a cleric procurator in the town with temporal power, in the sense that he was elector of deans, jurors, notaries of Calvene and of its two hamlets.

In 1288, the Bishops of Padua donated Calvene as a feud to some local Lords, who, then, gave it to the canons of Vicenza; until this period, Lugo and Lonedo were two hamlets of the fief: a mayor and a procurator administered them. In fact, also in 1288, the Bishop of Padua invested with the fief of Calvene Vincenzo fu Giulio de Calvene, who was also charged to administrate the Parish Church.

In 1333, the Bishop Ildebrandino invested the same feud and charge Ferrario fu Leonardo de Calvene.

In 1390, the territories of Lonedo and Lugo detached from Calvene and, a few years later, in 1404, Calvene, with the city of Vicenza, passed under the dominion of the Serenissima Republic of Venice. In fact, the discovery of coins bearing the effigy of the Doge Loredan in the Calvene area dates back to the Venetian period.

In 1500, the territories of Serra and Volpente were also given to Lugo.

Over the following centuries, the population experienced the heresy, which spread on the Altipiano dei Sette Comuni, the devastation of the plague (in 1575) and the phenomenon of banditry.

Around 1640, the schism in the Church of Calvene also took place, when the inhabitants of Lugo achieved the independence.

During the French domination of the eighteenth century, Calvene became a municipality with Lugo, in the Department of Bacchiglione, District of Schio, Canton of Tiene (now Thiene). In this period, the first riots against the Napoleonic troops also began in Calvene.

In 1814, with the fall of Napoleon, the territories of Veneto and Lombardy passed under the Austro-Hungarian Empire: the conditions of the population worsened because of the famine and the epidemic pellagra. Not even the phenomena of desertion and of banditry ceased.

Therefore, clandestine groups hostile to the Austrians took shape, which several inhabitants of Calvene also joined.

Finally, in 1866, the Venetian region passed to the Reign of Italy, just when the Northern Italy was crossed by the expedition of Garibaldi. Since the unification of Italy, in Calvene began the phenomenon of depopulation: the population decreased because the inhabitants started immigrating to overseas countries or died of the cholera plague. While Calvene became depopulated, Lugo exponentially increased the number of resident population.