The origins of the plebs Sanctae Agathae. Inscriptions lost and rediscovered on the history of Santhià in the Early Middle Ages

Abstract

Two fragments of white marble are embedded in the apsis’ wall outside the parish church of St. Agatha in Santhià (near Vercelli, in Piedmont): the first one is engraved with the final part of a dedicatory inscription to a martyr by a clergyman named Vvalpertus (or Alpertus); the second one is a part of a small pillar or a lintel coming from a presbytery enclosure, and is decorated with a motif of intertwined gallons. The inscription stayed in the middle of a pluteus bordered by a carved frame, of which only a part of the lower band survives: the letters and the style of the decorations allow a chronology within the 8^th century, while the fragment of pillar is to be traced back to a period between the 8^th and the first half of the 9^th. Of special interest are the Lombard onomastic of the dedicator and, in the final surviving text, the “signature” of a sculptor, which is present in a second inscription of Lombard age found in Piedmont, adorned with carved decorations as well. The analysis of these artefacts - hitherto unpublished - offered the opportunity to restudy two other inscriptions once existing in the church of St. Agatha, long lost and of uncertain authenticity: all these data allow various deductions about the history of Santhià over the centuries of the early Middle ages, the presence of a clergy in the countryside of the diocese of Vercelli, and the work of sculptors and engravers active between the 8^th and 9^th century in an area between Lombardy, Piedmont, Liguria and Provence, labelled in the past under the unifying name of “bottega delle Alpi Marittime”.