Courses and historical appeals: from the origins to today an agricultural project
It was the summer of 1642 when a group of Jesuits started the current Camporeale community by establishing a thriving farm
The Camporeale territory developed around a small Jesuit community, which in the summer of 1642 arrived in the Valdibella district, near the current inhabited center. There were only seven at the beginning, but animated by an extraordinary enthusiasm, because they saw that faith became new in concrete life and pushed towards intelligent and innovative constructions.
Behind them were the prestigious Gregorian University, from which they drew their global vision of reality: “The more universal, the more divine it is,” reads their Constitution approved just 20 years earlier.
Thus, from season to season, those brothers and their successors organized an extraordinarily efficient farm, establishing new working relationships with the farmers, experimenting with cultivation techniques and introducing seeds and tree varieties.
They attached great importance to the cultivation of vineyards, as evidenced by the many expenses noted in their accounting books, to pay grafters that made them come from far away.
The wine they produced was destined for their homes around the world and for the most illustrious tables. They loved art and research and were loved by the people who helped to grow according to their natural hard-working nature and attached to the land and family.
In the winter of 1767, however, a Royal Decree ordered his expulsion from the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, an official inventoried the confiscated assets and in addition to cellars, barrels and wine presses for grapes, he noted four vineyards with a total of 108,180 vineyards.
The brothers of the Society of Jesus left, after 125 years, an imposing beam (still today the beating heart of Camporeale) full of equipment, supplies and refined works of art but above all a very fertile territory whose vocation they had discovered.
In the years that followed an ever growing political vision, the logic of control and power effectively took away vital resources from the territory, to the point of completely debasing the agricultural culture which ended up being considered almost exclusively a source of exploitation and maximization of profits.
In fact, since the 1950s, working methods have entered the scene that have distorted the agricultural ecosystem: biodiversity has decreased more and more, soils have become poorer and many have left the countryside, cutting the historical link with the earth.
A turnaround was needed, in this case in history. We have collected the legacy of those simple men who believed in the resources of our territory and were able to leave us a priceless cultural heritage.
