Fumone (a village of approximately 2,000 inhabitants in the Ernici mountains, Frosinone province, at 783m altitude, the highest inhabited point in the Ciociaria zone) is known almost exclusively to students of medieval papal history for one specific event: it is the castle where Pietro da Morrone (Pope Celestine V, the Benedictine hermit who was elected pope in 1294 after a 27-month conclave deadlock, served as pope for five months, and then resigned the papacy, the only voluntary papal abdication in medieval history before that of Benedict XVI in 2013) died in captivity on May 19, 1296, having been imprisoned by his successor Boniface VIII in the Fumone fortress to prevent him from becoming a focus for opposition to Boniface's legitimacy.
Dante Alighieri (who placed Celestine V in Hell in the Inferno. Canto III, among the souls of those who "made the great refusal," the "gran rifiuto", though Dante doesn't name him explicitly) expressed the specific 13th-century Italian intellectual judgment on Celestine's abdication: that the renunciation of the papal office was a moral failure, an act of cowardice that opened the door for the corrupt Caetani pontificate of Boniface VIII. The Catholic Church's next judgment was opposite: Celestine was canonized in 1313 and is venerated as a saint whose simplicity of life and holiness of character were demonstrated precisely by his inability to survive the political world of the medieval papacy.
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Fumone: The Castle and the Town
The Castello di Fumone
The Castello di Fumone (the medieval fortress on the Fumone summit, still privately owned by the Longhi family who have maintained it since the 18th century) is open for guided visits on weekends and by appointment (fumone.eu). The castle interior includes the specific room where Celestine V was held captive (the "cella di Celestino V", a cell in the western tower, shown to visitors with the contemporary documents describing his imprisonment and death) and the castle garden (one of the most unusually positioned gardens in Lazio, a hanging garden on the castle ramparts at 783m altitude with views over the Sacco valley and the Ernici range). The specific Fumone castle quality: it has been continuously inhabited as a private residence rather than converted to a museum, which gives the interior an authentic inhabited quality that institutional museums rarely achieve.
The Name "Fumone"
The name Fumone (literally "big smoke", the Latinized version of the medieval name) refers to the specific function of the fortress in the medieval communication system: the Fumone summit was one of the signal fire stations of the medieval Lazio warning network, with the specific role of transmitting the signal of a new papal election from Rome to the cities of the Lazio papal territory (the signal fire visible from Fumone could be seen from Rome and from dozens of points in the Lazio hill zone). "When Fumone smokes" ("quando Fumone fuma") was the medieval Lazio phrase for the signal of a new pope, the origin of the modern papal election smoke signal tradition.
Q&A: Fumone
What is the connection between Fumone and Dante's "gran rifiuto"?
Dante's "gran rifiuto" (the great refusal, Inferno III, 59-60, the soul who made the great refusal of some high duty, widely identified by medieval commentators as Celestine V) is the specific poetic-political judgment on the Fumone story: Celestine's abdication created the conditions for Boniface VIII's papacy (1294-1303), which Dante considered a catastrophe for the Church and for Italy. Boniface's political manipulation of the Florentine party system contributed directly to Dante's own exile from Florence in 1302. The Fumone death is therefore, for Dante, the terminus of a chain of causation that includes his own personal ruin. The specific Fumone visit offers the rare opportunity to stand at the literal end of this chain, the cell where Celestine died 18 months after his abdication.
Internal Links
- Ernici: Il Contesto Medievale di Fumone
- Ciociaria: Fumone e Fiuggi nel Circuito
- Papato Medievale: Da Celestino a Bonifacio
- Dante e il Lazio: Il "Gran Rifiuto" a Fumone
- Ciociaria: I Borghi della Storia Papale
- Fotografare Fumone: Il Castello più Alto della Ciociaria
- Ernici in Inverno: Fumone e la Nebbia della Valle
