Goito (Upper Mantovano: ) is a "comune" with a population of 10,005 in the Province of Mantua in Lombardy. Goito is north of Mantua on the road leading to Brescia and Lake Garda, and straddles the old east–west Via Postumia between Cremona and Verona. The town is on the right bank of the Mincio River at a key crossing. The birthplace of Sordello, Goito is part of the historic region known as Alto Mantovano (Upper Mantua) and was the site of a notable fortress.
Etymology.
"Goito" generally indicates an area of Gothic settlement, and is a common toponym in Italy; a similar example is "godega". In 1902, Italian legal scholar Nino Tamassia published a document from 1045 which was brought to his attention by scholar F. C. Carreri and indicated that at least some of Goito's inhabitants said that they still lived "according to Gothic law" ("qui professimus legem vivere Gothorum"). Local histories by Federico Amedei, Livio Calafassi and Giovanni Tassoni have agreed on the toponym's Gothic origin. Historian Pietro Pelati, however, said that the name drives from "guttus" (a Latin term for a water vase, often indicating a settlement by a river).
History.
Antiquity.
In pre-Roman antiquity, present-day Goito stood at a crossing of the river Mincio halfway between the Celtic Cenomani towns of Brescia and Verona and the Etruscan and Boii settlement of Mantua. The Cenomani tribe soon became Roman clients, but goodwill between them and the expanding Roman Republic did not last. Eventually, allied with the Insubres and Boii, they participated in a series of revolts between 200 and 197 BCE orchestrated and aided by a Carthaginian general named Hamilcar; modern historians, however, call Hamilcar's role "minimal". The Cenomani and Insubres were defeated at an unspecified crossing of the Mincio in 197 BCE by the Roman consul Gaius Cornelius Cethegus; during the battle, the Cenomani may have betrayed the Insubres. Roman rule of the upper Mantua began.
Goito may have been founded as a Roman way station in the early second century BCE when the Romans built the Via Postumia, a major road connecting their colonies at Genoa, Piacenza and Cremona in Aemilia et Liguria to the newly conquered territories in the eastern Po Valley. The middle section of the Postumia began in Cremona and ran eastwards to Bedriacum (the main crossing of the river Oglio), crossing the Mincio at Goito (other nearby crossings were at Valeggio and Mantua) before continuing east to the former Cenomani town of Verona and the capital of the new Roman province of Venetia at Aquileja.
Portions of the Via Postumia have always been visible in Goito: on the right bank of the Mincio at Corte Merlesca and Torre di Goito, and on the left bank at Massimbona. These sections of the road are locally known as "la Levada" ("the raised road"). Further evidence of Roman-era settlement in the area is Roman remains found in the late 19th century at Castelvetere – or Castelvetro – indicating a settlement (now at the Museo Civico at Mantua) and 21 Roman burials excavated in 1939 about south-east of the town. A number of brooches ("fibulae"), a carved cameo jewel, pendants, and portions of a glass-bead necklace were found in the tombs. No Roman-era bridge has been found on the Mincio, so the river was probably crossed by ferry or at a ford. Local historians have taken the toponym "Corte Guá" (farmstead at the ford) to indicate an old ford on the Mincio.
Early Middle Ages.
After the fall of Rome, Goito became a significant barbarian settlement. Excavations in 1968 and from 1990 to 1993 unearthed two late antiquity and early medieval burial grounds on the road between Goito and Castellucchio, at Sacca di Goito, with at least 240 burials. Two small cross pendants, a number of short swords and daggers, pendants and other objects were retrieved. Some of the graves probably belonged to Ostrogoths ("fibulae" and mirrors are attributed to the Chernyakhov culture), but most of the burials were Lombards.
High Middle Ages.
Documents from 11th-century Goito indicate that its population lived according to Latin, Lombard and Gothic law. Carreri said that the first mention of the town was a small donation in 1031 by a priest of "Latin law" named Martin, son of Leo, to the monastery of Saint Genesius in Brescello. Two similar donations were made to the Church of Saint Mary (a dependency of the monastery) by Manfred "of Alemannian law" in 1042 and 1044. Matilda of Tuscany, countess of Mantua, donated four farmsteads in nearby Rivalta sul Mincio and four in Goito to the monastery in 1099.
Eighteenth-century historian Ippolito Donesmondi published a document that the rights to a chapel in the Goito castle were donated in 1123 by the bishop of Mantua to the abbey of San Benedetto Polirone (a wealthy monastery patronized by Matilda of Tuscany), indicating that Goito was already fortified. Goito's connections to Matilda have led local historians (including Carreri) to theorize that the 1080 battle of Volta Mantovana between imperial and papal forces actually took place in Goito rather than nearby Volta, but their interpretation would rest on a different understanding of the text of Bernold of Constance's "Chronicon" (substituting "apud Guithum" for the accepted "apud Voltam").
The castle of Goito became more significant. Frederick II received a delegation from Mantua at Goito in 1237, and pardoned the Mantuans for their insubordination against the Holy Roman Empire. In 1250, the castle was chosen for an Imperial Diet by Conrad IV of Germany.
According to his near-contemporary anonymous Occitan biographer, the troubadour Sordello was born into a knightly family in Goito during the late 12th century. Early modern Mantuan historians such as Bartolomeo Sacchi "il Platina" and Scipione Agnelli Maffei said that he was from the Mantuan line of the Visconti family (a claim not accepted by modern historians), and literary historian Giovanni Mario Crescimbeni said that Sordello, after his exile in Provence, returned and acquired the title "de Goito" when he become lord of Goito. This claim is unsubstantiated, and not accepted by modern historians; the elderly Sordello returned to Italy as a member of Charles of Anjou's entourage in 1265. He was imprisoned at Novara for unknown reasons the following year, and received the lordship of lands and castles in Abruzzo in 1269.
According to historians, the Bonacolsi family ("de facto" rulers of Mantua) purchased a house to collect tolls at the bridge in Goito during the late 13th century. The Bonacolsis' enemy and the new ruler of Mantua, Gian Francesco Gonzaga, granted Goito a tax exemption in 1318. Charles IV of Bohemia donated the town to the house of Gonzaga and the Marquisate of Mantua in 1353; this confirmed Goito's status as a fortress for the Gonzagas, a significant signoria in the late medieval Po Valley.
The Renaissance.
During the 15th century, Goito was involved in the wars opposing the Visconti of Milan to the rising Gonzaga of Mantua and the Republic of Venice. In 1453, Carlo Gonzaga (a claimant to the Gonzaga estates in Mantua) attempted to take control of the area with Venetian support; Gonzaga's troops were defeated at the farmstead of Villabona (a "frazione" of Goito) on 14 June by the forces of marquis of Mantova Ludovico III Gonzaga. Ludovico Gonzaga, pleased with the victory, built a residence in Goito (where painter Andrea Mantegna worked in 1463–64), restored the fortifications and built the Naviglio di Goito canal; he died there from plague in 1478. Goito maintained its prosperity under dukes of Mantua Guglielmo and Vincenzo I Gonzaga, becoming a wealthy market town on the road between Mantua and Venetian-held Verona.
War of the Mantuan Succession.
On 22 November 1629, during the War of the Mantuan Succession Goito was surrendered by its Mantuan commander to imperial forces who were besieging Mantua. Goito's capture was a key episode of the siege; its fall threatened communication and supply routes with Peschiera and Valeggio sul Mincio, its Venetian allies in Verona. An attempt to lift the siege failed on 29 May 1630, when French and Venetian troops were defeated outside Goito at the Battle of Villabuona in the present-day "frazione" of Villabona. The treaty of Cherasco restored Goito and the duchy of Mantua to Charles Gonzaga, duke of Mantua. The war, its ensuing plague, and the general decline in Mantua's economic and political fortunes began Goito's decline. The town was struck by an earthquake on 5 July 1693, and its castle was damaged.
18th century.
In the autumn of 1701, during the War of the Spanish Succession, Goito was besieged by imperial troops; it was relieved by French troops allied with Duke of Mantua Ferdinando Carlo Gonzaga the following spring, and was unsuccessfully besieged by another imperial army on 19 May 1702. The French garrison at Goito was driven out of the town on 19 August 1706 by imperial forces commanded by the prince of Hesse. In his report of the battle, the prince wrote that Goito had "a large ditch, a thick wall, 4 bastions and a ravelin" and he besieged it with 1,800 foot soldiers and 1,000 cavalry. After an unsuccessful eight-gun bombardment, the prince gave orders to scale the walls; the commander surrendered the night before, however, and was allowed to withdraw with his 200-man garrison to Cremona. The seizure of Goito was a key event in the lead-up to the French victory in the battle of Castiglione, where the imperial forces were defeated by a large French army which arrived too late to save Goito. Despite that defeat, imperial forces conquered Lombardy for Austria; they entered Milan on 26 September 1706, ending a century and a half of Spanish rule in Lombardy.
Duke Ferdinando Carlo Gonzaga's alliance with France and betrayal of his emperor during the war was punished by an imperial edict ending his lordship of the Duchy of Mantua. He died in exile in Padua before the news reached him, and the duchy and Goito were incorporated by the Austrian Circle. Spanish Lombardy also became an Austrian domain, administered separately from the former duchy of Mantua. Austrian gains in Lombardy and Mantua were confirmed by the Treaty of Utrecht.
During the War of the Polish Succession, a Franco-Piedmontese army invaded Austrian Lombardy and entered the duchy of Mantua. Imperial troops led by Count Königsegg had left a garrison of 100 men under Lieutenant Carrillo at Goito to prevent the allies from crossing the Mincio or slow their advance. Fearing that the allied army had crossed further upstream, Carillo left Goito on 16 June 1735 after destroying (partially or completely) its Mincio bridge; the town was then occupied by a 400-man force commanded by the Comte de Ségur. The main Austrian army and the Piedmontese-French allies faced off from opposite sides of the Mincio and count Königsegg, fearing that his position was no longer defensible, retreated from Lombardy. After their October 1735 armistice negotiations, the French were allowed to keep a garrison in Goito and free passage to supply it; the garrison was removed when the peace was concluded.
In 1745, during the War of the Austrian Succession, the Austrian administration wanted to simplify governance and finance and united the former Duchy of Mantua (including Goito) with Austrian Lombardy and the former Duchy of Milan; Goito has been a "comune" of Lombardy ever since. Taxes to fund the war being fought across Germany and in western Lombardy, Piedmont and Liguria were raised, and soldiers from the Mantuan countryside were recruited to fight in Austrian regiments. Historian Corrado Vivanti wrote that peasants and townsmen in declining Goito benefited little after the wars from the judicial, administrative and revenue reforms associated with Maria Theresa of Austria and Joseph II of Austria's enlightened absolutism and the reformism of Lombard intellectuals (which consolidated large-scale landholding), and the region experienced agrarian disturbances in 1761.
Napoleonic Wars.
In 1796, during operations leading to the Battle of Borghetto, Goito was taken by French revolutionary troops and incorporated into the Cisalpine Republic; it was recaptured by Sebastian Prodanovich, an Austrian colonel of Serbian descent, on 11 April 1799. On 25–26 December 1800, French troops trying to recapture the town in connection with the Battle of Pozzolo clashed again with the Austrians at the Goito bridge. In the initial engagements by the French right flank, General Dupont and the Division Watrin defeated an 8,000-man Austrian force led by General D'Aspré and seized the town and bridge. The battle involving the French right flank then shifted