Seborga is a municipality of the Italian Republic, in the region of Liguria, about 500 metres above the sea.
It is a territory nestled between the hills of Mount Bego and the sea, rich in history, which has always drawn tourists and enthusiasts of orders of chivalric inspiration.
In prehistoric times Mount Bego (2,872 m) and its surroundings, north-east of Nice and west of Tende, formed a very important religious site.
Some 40,000 rock carvings of religious significance are found there (the Valley of Marvels).
From the sea, a little to the west of the Lérins islands and to the east between Ventimiglia and Seborga, lies Mount Bego. It may be assumed that scattered settlements were already present around 2000 BC.
The place where Seborga stands today first became a religious centre for the Ligurian and Celto-Ligurian peoples and was used as a burial ground, mentioned by the Romans under the name Sepelegium or Sopelegium, and later Sepulchrum.
The name Pallantium was also used, probably derived from the local tribe of the Pallantii, and it survives today in the locality called Pian di Palladino, north of Seborga.
The first historical references to Seborga date back to the fifth century BC, when the presence of corsairs and pirates probably drove the inhabitants of the coastal strip to take refuge in the near hinterland.
Around 250 BC western Liguria, then part of Celtic Gaul, was conquered by the Romans. The settlements there were surveyed and classified as “burga”, and the inhabitants began to organise themselves in an orderly way, establishing rules of common life. At first the Romans were not well regarded by the local population, which was considered barbarian and could not benefit from the ius italicus, a set of privileges concerning in particular the economy and taxation; the inhabitants therefore long kept a hostile attitude towards the Romans, which faded only when they obtained Roman citizenship.
Around AD 600 Seborga was also called Spulgas, or “Sepulgas de Sebaste”, by the Occitan Cathars, who likewise considered Seborga a sacred place. Spulga means “cave”. One hypothesis rests on the unusual name Seborga bore in the Middle Ages: “Spulgas de Sebaste”. “Spulgas” means “caves”, which can be used as tombs or hiding places, while “Sebaste” is a name hard to explain for Seborga, although Sebaste, Seborga and one of the two local saints (Saint Sebastian) all three begin with the same letters, “Seb”.
A hypothesis emerges: Sebaste is the Greek name of the city of Samaria, given to it in the first century after its rebuilding by Herod the Great.
Originally the term “Samaria” denoted not a city but a central and historic region of Palestine, in which notable sites are found:
(a) the tomb of the prophet Elisha, though not his remains;
- b) the tombs of the patriarchs;
- c) Makron was venerated “as a god”: a crucified and “risen” dead man whose tomb and remains were the object of worship and pilgrimage until 362, when the emperor Julian the Apostate ordered the tomb destroyed and the remains burned.
According to the theologian Theodoret, the body of John the Baptist was buried there, but he may have confused this place with Machaerus (east of the Dead Sea), the fortress where John was imprisoned (some hold that John the Baptist also rose again).
Given the extensive trade in relics in the Middle Ages, however, it may be supposed that tombstones, bones, skeletons or mummies — even partial ones — of great importance to Christendom were kept in that “eagle's nest” which was Seborga.
Liguria then suffered the invasion of barbarian peoples, Ostrogoths and Byzantines, until it was conquered in 643 by the Lombard king Rothari.
At the beginning of the eighth century, as Saracen raids intensified, some burga, Seborga among them, were fortified for defence and became castra.
In 770 the Lombard kingdom was annexed to the kingdom of France, itself incorporated into the Carolingian empire, following the marriage of Ermengarda, daughter of the Lombard king Desiderius, to Charlemagne.
In 789 Charlemagne, as part of the organisation of the empire, created the county of Ventimiglia (including Seborga), which at first depended on the March of Tuscia. In 890 Adalbert, margrave of Tuscany, appointed his son Boniface II count of Ventimiglia; the first to bear this title, he succeeded in making the county of Ventimiglia independent of the March of Tuscia.
Boniface, count of Ventimiglia, chose the Castrum of Seborga as the burial place for himself and his descendants, changing the name of the town to Castrum Sepulchri or Castrum de Sepulchro, although no trace of a noble tomb has ever been found at Seborga.
In the Middle Ages Seborga was known as Castrum Sepulchri or Castrum de Sepulchro (Castle of the Sepulchre, or by the Sepulchre) or Sepulchri Burgum. From this last expression derive the present-day names: Seborga in Italian and Sabour(g) in French.
The fief of Castrum Sepulchri is mentioned in a document of 954 concerning the donation of that territory by Count Guidone of Ventimiglia to the Benedictine fathers of the island of Lérins: a territory of about 110 km² bordering San Remo to the north (Republic of Genoa) and Perinaldo to the south (Kingdom of Savoy), Ospedaletti to the east and Vallebona to the west (Republic of Genoa), together with the chaplaincy of Saint Michael in Ventimiglia (today the church of Saint Michael in the diocese of Ventimiglia-Sanremo).
This document, considered apocryphal — probably because the original had been lost — was reworked in 1304 by Abbot Sicard (source: municipal administration of Seborga, 1963) with the information in his possession and contained in the original document; that reworking was held to be authentic until 1757, when the archivists of Turin demonstrated that it was false.
The only document never disputed and regarded as original, dated 1177 and surviving to this day, concerning a dispute between the monks of Lérins and the counts of Ventimiglia over the boundaries of their respective properties between Vallebona and Seborga, confirms the existence of the former abbatial principality of Seborga.
After the deed of donation of 954, the territory of Seborga continued to depend administratively on the abbey of Lérins, in the county of Provence, which, after belonging to the Angevins of Naples, was annexed to the Kingdom of France in 1481.
Related pages
→ From 1946 to the present day
Related sites
castrumsepulchri.com