Castrum Sepulchri

Seborga is a municipality of the Italian Republic, located in the Region of Liguria about 500 metres from the sea.

It is a territory enclosed between the hills that raise Mount Bego and the sea, rich in history, and has always been a destination for tourists and enthusiasts of orders of chivalric inspiration.

In prehistoric times, Mount Bego (2872 m) and the surrounding area, north-east of Nice, west of Tenda, was a very important religious site.

Some 40,000 rock engravings with a religious connotation (Valley of Wonders, Vallée des Merveilles) are found in this area.

From the sea, a little to the west of the Lerino Islands and to the east between Ventimiglia and Seborga lies Monte Bego. It can be assumed that some sporadic settlements were already present around 2000 BC.

The place where Seborga stands today initially became a religious centre for the Ligurian and Celto-Ligurian populations and was used as a cemetery and mentioned by the Romans as Sepelegium or Sopelegium and then Sepulchrum.

The name Pallantium was also used, presumably derived from the local Pallantii tribe, and can still be found today in the locality called Pian di Palladino, north of Seborga.

The earliest historical references to Seborga can be traced back to the 5th century BC, when the presence of corsairs and pirates probably drove the inhabitants settled on the coastal strip to take refuge in the first hinterland.

Around 250 BC, western Liguria, then part of Celtic Gaul, was conquered by the Romans. The settlements there were surveyed and classified as ‘burga’ and the inhabitants began to take on an orderly structure, with the establishment of rules of communal life. The Romans were not initially well liked by the local population, as the latter was considered barbarian and could not enjoy the benefits of the ius italicus, a set of privileges especially concerning the economy and taxation; the inhabitants therefore always held a hostile attitude towards the Romans, which only disappeared when they obtained Roman citizenship.

Around 600 A.D., Seborga was also called by the Occitan Cathars as Spulgas or ‘Sepulgas de Sebaste’, who also regarded Seborga as a sacred place. ‘Spulga’ means ‘cave’. A hypothesis based on the (super)bizarre name that Seborga bore in the Middle Ages: ‘Spulgas de Sebaste’. Spulgas’ means ‘caves’ that can be used as tombs, hiding places… and – ‘Sebaste’, an incomprehensible name for Seborga, even though Sebaste, Seborga and one of the two local saints (Saint Sebastian) all three begin with the same letters ‘Seb’.

A hypothesis arises: Sebaste is the Greek name of the city of Samaria, which was given to it in the 1st century after its reconstruction by Herod the Great.

Originally, the term ‘Samaria’ designated not a city but a central and historical region in Palestine, in which there are interesting sites:

(a) the tomb of the prophet Elisha, but not his remains

b) the tombs of the patriarchs

c) Makron was worshipped ‘as a god’ a crucified and ‘resurrected’ dead man whose tomb and remains were the object of worship and pilgrimage until 362 when the Emperor Julian the Apostate ordered the destruction of said tomb and cremation of his remains.

According to the theologian Theodoret, that is where the deceased body of John the Baptist was buried, but he may have confused that place with Macherontum (east of the Dead Sea), the fortress where John was imprisoned (some consider that John the Baptist was also resurrected.

However, given the important traffic in relics in the Middle Ages, one might speculate that some tombstone(s), or bone, skeleton(s) or mummy(s), even partial ones, of supposedly great importance to Christianity, were kept in the ‘eagle’s nest’ that was Seborga.

Liguria subsequently suffered the invasion of barbarian peoples, Ostrogoths and Byzantines, until in 64a3 it was conquered by the Lombard king Rotari.

In the early 8th century, as Saracen raids intensified, some burga, including Seborga, were fortified for defensive purposes and became castra.

In 770, the Lombard Kingdom was annexed to the Kingdom of France, which in turn was incorporated into the Carolingian Empire, following the marriage between Ermengarda, daughter of the Lombard king Desiderius, and Charlemagne.

In 789 Charlemagne, as part of the organisation of the empire, established the County of Ventimiglia (including Seborga), initially dependent on the Marca Tuscia. In 890 the Marquis of Tuscany Adalbert appointed his son Boniface II Count of Ventimiglia, who, as the first to bear this title, succeeded in making the County of Ventimiglia independent from the Marca Tuscia.