On the Bishops of Gubbio

...when they communicate to the literary world the most complete chorographic map of the Pontifical dominion, for the completion of which they have been laboring for a long time. Meanwhile, that same Boscovich, whose kindness I have not experienced for the first time, wished for me to have a foretaste of this.

II. Gubbio sits upon the Caminiano river, or rather torrent, and lies partly on the plain, partly occupying the roots of the neighboring mountain as they gradually rise. And this is indeed the current site of the city, after it was renovated in the 12th century. In former times, at least for the greater part, it seems to have been situated lower down, in that plain which extends below the city to the remains of the ancient theater and mausoleum. Cluverius also had seen this, who confesses that he discovered the site of the ancient city to be different from that which now exists, from the remains of temples and the theater, as he himself says, not far apart a) Cluver. Ital. antiq. l. II. c. VII. p. 626.. And truly, whatever land lies between there is filled with rubble and ruins, and recently, when it was necessary to dig the earth deeper for laying the foundations of a new and most spacious hospital in the cattle market, which occupies no small part of that plain, illustrious traces of ancient buildings appeared.

III. Moreover, that the city of Gubbio was in that place before it yielded to fate and, as happened to most others, collapsed afflicted by the force of time, is also shown by ancient tablets written in the year 1092, by which the alienation of a vineyard of the canons of the cathedral church of Gubbio is recorded, which vineyard is indeed said to be situated in the ancient city near the Caminiano river b) A synopsis of those tablets exists in the code of the Armanni Archive, signed with the letter D, page 14, about which something must be said in the final chapter of this dissertation.. At the end of the 11th century, therefore, the time when those tablets were written, the site of the old city was vacant of inhabitants and planted with vines, and since it is said to have been near the Caminiano, it is sufficiently apparent that Ughelli and others have strayed far from the truth, who wrote that ancient Gubbio was founded on the very high mountain that now overhangs the city, to that certainly arduous place, and one of most difficult ascent, where a temple sacred to Saint Ubaldo, the patron of the city, and ennobled by his venerable body, rises: a place which it is hardly believable that anyone could have judged suitable for building a city.

IV. What Silius Italicus sings about the city of Gubbio helps to refute this common opinion of Ughelli: