When banditry disappeared in Serbariu: the miracle of 12 Emilian friars 300 years ago

Serbariu , year of the Lord 1700 , or thereabouts: if in the rest of Sardinia banditry rages fiercely, with deaths killed daily, in the heart of Sulcis for at least half a century one lives in a bubble of relative peace and social prosperity , cultural (and a little economic too).

It is due to twelve mendicant friars, long-limbed, clear-eyed, delicate-looking, who come from Emilia and settle in the valleys and hills that today take the name of Serbariu di Sopra . Other than myth, other than legend: it is all very true although only very vague ruins remain of their convent. But an indelible trace of their work has remained in the oral stories (and also some written traces) that a retiree from Carbonia passionate about local history, Benvenuto Zandara , 69, reworked and put pen to paper in the book " Monte Miai, fra legends and testimonies ".

The work was presented thanks to the Serbariu District Committee and with the collaboration of the Collegium Musicum Monteverdi. It reveals an unprecedented cross-section of the territory that today hosts Carbonia : "What happened 300 years ago is incredible - reveals Zandara - the arrival of those friars raised the quality of life in that agro-pastoral world in the handover between the Spaniards and the Piedmontese, but elsewhere banditry caused massacres, here apart from marginal episodes, thanks to those friars life had more livable connotations ”. For example, these mendicant friars had the intuition of advising the midwives to use water from a pure spring when they attended the mothers and this almost radically cut off the numerous postpartum deaths, "or they invented festivals and celebrations between the sacred and the profane that accentuated the sense of community to the point that the reasons for friction were reduced ”.

300 years have passed, there is almost no trace of the convent, but they have left a sure legacy: Serbariu has strengthened itself as a community, around 1850 it will become a Municipality and in 1938 it will yield the baton to the newborn Carbonia: among the mists of time, thanks should also be offered to those nice friars.