Vergelle San Giovanni d'Asso

This village was already a castle with the parish church of San Lorenzo is about 5 km on the north-west of San Giovanni d’Asso near the parish of Pava. It is situated on a clayed hill on the right of the Asso raging flood in a lateral valley. If in the XII century this farmhouse was part of the territory of San Giovanni d’Asso, it probably belonged to the count Paltonieri , son of the Count Forteguerra from Siena, who, with a public document of the 14th July 1151 gave the castle of San Giovanni d’Asso with all its district , the castle and the territory of Chiusi as a pledge for ten years to the major of Siena. Then, the Count Pionieri was followed in the possession of San Giovanni d’Asso and its surroundings by the noble family Gori Pannilini from Siena who built the oratory of San Pietro in Asso in the garden of their villa in San Giovanni d’Asso. In 1251 the council of the Bell of Siena ordered that the castle of Vergelle was to be surrounded by a circle of walls at the expense of the people and in 1271 it was assigned to it a minor governor. Nowadays this place is an under repair farmhouse. In the territory of Vergelle in the XV century it was cultivated the saffron, which at that time was very renowned for its quality. It is testified by a document of the Monastery of Saint Eugenio near Siena in the Arch.Dipl.Fior. written on the 7th January 1401, where we talk about the selling, for 50 golden florins, of a field cultivated with saffron’s galls in a place called “Colombaio”, in the district of Vergelle. But the main merit of this place is that it gave to Siena its “Raffaello” , in the person of the famous painter Giovanni Antonio Bazzi called Sodoma, who was born in Vergelle and not in Vercelli, as a lot of his biographers have written. It is testified by a document of 1243 published the annalists of Camaldoli and undersigned by a certain De Percellis, mayor of Badia San Pietro in Campo in Val d’Orcia, according to an agreement between the commune of Montepulciano and the already mentioned Badia. Vergelle suffered from the earthquakes which have probably destroyed the not anymore traceable circle of walls. At the end of the XVIII century two earthquakes were particularly strong and caused damages also in the near Abbey of Monte Oliveto Maggiore. We know that the Commune of Vergelle on the 17th March 1257 nominated a procurator to go to Siena and take an oath of faithfulness to that Republic.(ARCH.DIPL.SAN. Volume VII of the parchments, n°631).