Giovan Carlo Tramontano was a Neapolitan of popular origins, son of a banker and banker himself, supporter of the Aragonese dynasty, in the fifteenth century, at the time of the struggles between the Spanish and the French. Master of the Royal Mint of Naples, as he directed the minting of the coin of the Kingdom, he was the first citizen elected by the people to sit in the Neapolitan Parliament, an assembly traditionally reserved for the nobility and the clergy.
With subterfuge and cunning, in 1497 Giancarlo Tramontano finally managed to be appointed Count of Matera, a city that until then had been state-owned, that is, directly dependent on the Crown, therefore, rather free, with greater autonomy and lower taxation than the feudal cities. The sovereign subordinated the concession of the county to the approval of the citizens of Matera, who did not intend to depend on a feudal lord.
Yet, Giancarlo Tramontano still succeeded in obtaining this approval, both by bribing some nobles of Matera, and by deceiving some commoners of Matera, with the promise to grant the former the exercise of some privileges and the latter some exemptions from taxes.
During a battle against the French, he was taken prisoner and deprived of the county but, having managed to free himself, he went to Naples, to attend the royal procession of King Ferdinand and his wife, in order to enter their graces.
Tramontano, as an expert manipulator, devised a trick to impress the king: he had wooden triumphal arches built and had them placed in streets close to those where the procession would take place. Once the procession began, he arranged for coins and other valuables to be thrown from these arches, in order to attract a large part of the crowd to those points.
He succeeded so well in his intent, to the point of inducing the king himself to change the route of the procession, now reduced to a few followers, to head towards those prodigious arches.
Tramontano and his wife, to complete the work of winning the sympathy of the royals, in view of a reassignment of the county of Matera, paid homage to the queen with a pearl necklace. Although the king did not give in to such flattery, later the Tramontano managed to convince the viceroy to be reassigned the coveted county.
Back in Matera, the hated Count Tramontano, who had already deceived and harassed the citizens of Matera, nobles and commoners, demanded further taxation from the local nobility and from the people the exorbitant sum of 24 thousand ducats, to pay off his debts, since he found himself in economic hardship.
Exactly the day after the exorbitant request for money to Matera, with popular discontent now at its peak, the count was assassinated.
The murder took place on the evening of December 29, 1514, when the count and his wife left the Cathedral at the end of the evening mass.
Either the instigators nor the material executors of the crime were ever found, although it is easy to imagine the unanimous agreement of the population in wanting to free themselves from the exorbitant oppression of such a tyrant.
The crime was however considered an attack on the Crown, represented on the territory by the count, and for this reason the king sent the commissioner Giovanni Villani to Matera to investigate and punish the culprits.
In reality, four innocent Materans were captured and executed, while other citizens under investigation were forced to pay two thousand ducats to redeem their freedom.
The same city administration was accused of having fomented the riot without having punished the guilty and was sentenced to a fine of ten thousand ducats.
Only on 28 May 1515, at the request of the Mayor and upon payment of a further fine, the king granted the pardon to the city.
Commissioner Villani, following this story, even wrote a comedy, entitled “Il Conte di Matera” which in turn inspired the production of the homonymous film of 1955, starring Virna Lisi.
According to some scholars, this episode refers to the Latin motto, placed at the foot of the ox, depicted in the municipal coat of arms of Matera. It reads: bos lassus firmius figit pedem (the tired ox sinks the step more firmly). Moral of the story: the people of Matera would have the temper of an ox: tireless, dignified worker, but certainly not willing to endure sacrifices beyond a reasonable measure!
It is interesting to note that, at the time of the heinous crime, to commemorate the incident, an anonymous chronicler, discreetly educated, felt the need to engrave a graffiti in Latin in the church of San Giovanni Battista. Even today you can read: DIE 29 DC (decembris)15[.]5 INTERFECTVUS (est) COMES MA(therae).
(Regarding the year, it was written 1515 instead of 1514, because since the Middle Ages and still in those times, according to the different styles of counting the years, that of the nativity placed the beginning of the year already on December 25, instead of the first of January, as prescribed by the style of circumcision).
Due to the premature death of the count, the fortress located upstream of the city of Matera, the so-called Tramontano Castle, was never completed, and the street next to the Cathedral, where the heinous crime took place, is still called via Riscatto.
Ironically, if in Matera the figure of the Count has remained negatively impressed in the collective memory, as evidenced by the local toponymy, which introduced the Via del Riscatto, in Naples, in the central area, near the Duomo, there is instead the Via Giancarlo Tramontano, in memory of his democratic election in the Parliament of Naples, the first in the history of the Kingdom to represent the people!
