Perhaps not everyone knows that the Tower of the Knights, which stands on the island of San Nicola, has an inscription placed on the architrave above the entrance door:
“Coteret et Confriget”
which means something like:
"This tower will break and will crush those who enter here in a warlike way!”
This sentence was sculpted by the Lateran Canons as a papal bull, issued in 1500, had formalized the permission for these churchmen to be able to resort to violence and blood in order to defend the island from enemy hands. These men of faith were granted the possibility of resorting to torture and even killing in case of need.
Sword and pastoral, two images that are often found represented on the island, want to represent precisely this absolute mastery of spiritual and secular power on the Tremiti islands.
Think that there are even some elders of the island who remember when, when they were young, had managed to access the basement of the abbey to find stone beds and iron hooks useful for practicing torture in the best possible way!
If you want to learn more about the exploits of the canons and the history of the Tremiti Islands, read this article.
Comments