Name’s origin

Several historians and scholars have questioned the origins of the name "Controguerra", for a first reconstruction, formulated by Palma, the name would derive from the thirteenth century feudal lord Jacopo Cacciaguerra; while, for a second line of thought, promoted by Biagio De Berardinis, the name would have originated from that of another feudal lord, belonging to the Vinciguerra family. However, these two theories can be debunked as there are medieval documents - the most famous is the Catalogus Baronum, from the 17th century. XII – which attest to the existence of “Contraguerra” before the coming of Jacopo Cacciaguerra and Vinciguerra! Furthermore, the heraldry of the respective family coats of arms of these feudal lords does not match in any element with that of the Municipality of Controguerra, and it is difficult for a feudal lord to have given the name to the fiefdom; rather it is true that the opposite occurs, i.e. that the feudal lord takes the name from the fief over which he rules.

For Domenico Danesi the name would have originated from the Latin "against", which he translated with the adverb "in front". This author imagined that beyond the Tronto there was a country that opposed it under the name of "Guerra". This suggestive theory, however, clashes with the lack of identification by historians of a country bearing this name. Furthermore, it cannot be kept silent that the (few) geographical maps bearing the toponym "Guerra" are often full of errors and distortions, while there are much more precise and reliable contemporary maps, such as that of Natale Bonifiacio, from 1590, which does not report the aforementioned toponym.

For Enrico Abbate and Don Alfonso Panichi the name should rather be linked to a specific war event. In particular, for Panichi the clash could be identified with a battle that took place between the Byzantine troops and the Ostrogothic militias in the 6th century AD. This theory could be supported by the presence of archaeological remains, which testify to the clash, found in the area of ​​the town and by the symbolism present in the municipal coat of arms.

For the scholars Luisa Franchi Dell'Orto and Claudia Vultaggio, the name derives from the medieval Latin contra(ta), i.e. "contrada", and "Guerra" would be a person's name.

Lastly, in recent years Matteo Di Natale has reflected on the origin of the toponym. For the scholar, the "contra" should be interpreted, as Luisa Franchi Dell'Orto and Claudia Vultaggio already did, with the medieval Latinism contra(ta), or "contrada", while "war" is a word of Lombard origin: with the term " werra” the people-army that came from the North indicated their own way of fighting, messy and ferocious, clearly opposed to the ordered “bellum” of the Romans.

Ultimately, for Di Natale the etymology Controguerra could be born either as a "counterpart of the war", in reference to an armed confrontation, perhaps a raid by the Lombards against the native pro-Roman population who inhabited the area in the 16th century. VI, or as "contrata di Guerra", because, as also observed by other scholars, Guerra was also a Lombard name.

Undoubtedly the archaeological finds attest that the Controguerra area was inhabited since much earlier times, but it can be hypothesized that the toponym was born after 568 AD, the year of the descent of the Lombards into Italy.

Obviously, even this reconstruction of events does not claim to close the question of the origin of Controguerra forever, but wants to offer a new key to understanding the events, anchoring them to the historical framework of reference and supporting them with a philological reasoning based on existing documentation.

In the absence of certain evidence, nothing prevents us from thinking that the war event at the origin of the toponym can be identified in a clash between the Franks and the Lombards (773-774 AD), or perhaps in a devastation by the Hungarians (899-954 AD), or in a skirmish that took place during the Norman occupation (1078-1150 AD). Just as nothing prevents us from identifying a more "peaceful" fact at the origin of the town, such as the long possession of the territory by a landowner called Guerra, who by definition ended up stamping his name on the district.

For the sake of completeness, it should be added that on the territory of the current Controguerra in ancient times there were also other small inhabited settlements, the best known of which was Corata, which stood in the Torretta district. The inhabited centers of Corata and Contraguerra coexisted until the sec. XII, when the second became more important than the first, which ended up disappearing.