Map - Martone

Martone (Calabrian: Màrtuni) is a town and comune in the province of Reggio Calabria, Calabria, in southern Italy. Its origins date back to between the 7th and 8th centuries.

The founders were Greek monks from the Byzantine Orient who made a deep impression on the social-economic fabric of the region. The monks travelled from Cappadocia, Syria, Palestine, Libya, Egypt, and Greece proper, chased by Syrian persecution, to find refuge in Sicily and Calabria. For the monks the locality must have been the ideal ambience, being an isolated place far from worldly passions, suitable for the ascetic life of prayer, study, meditation and work.

It is likely that the area has been inhabited since prehistoric times when cave-dwellers lived there.

Martone, like all the Locride area, was part of Greek monasticism; it is known for certain that "the monks were living solitarily in grottos or in convents bound by the oath of chastity in the communal bond of prayer and work. The emaciated Christ which the Byzantine iconography was perpetuating for centuries, the suave darkish face of the Mother of God in the icons and frescos and the vast series of Saints, did make their solitude quite serene, did alleviate the heavy toils, and were reawakening the sign of the Orient in the peace of the ascetic dwellings and in the squalor of the grottos".

Also in the Grotto Territory, which included the municipalities of Mammola, Martone and St. Giovanni di Gerace, there existed "small monastic churches, which though not competing in historic artefacts with those of Stilo and of the Paterion di Rossano, nevertheless they still preserve traces of Byzantine art".

"These monasteries were not only intended to preserve the relicts of antiquity, as in Vico's expressions, but also a school of agriculture and trades, reforesting, land-reclaiming, cultivating, ploughing, sowing, intensifying the cultivation of olive trees, of vines and of chestnuts, building aqueducts and mills, opening the way to the first artisan activities and representing, therefore, the heralds of the protection of the rural population, in a calamitous and decentralized age which was the Byzantine".

Many scholars identify Martone with the village of Santa Maria di Bucito, of which there are traces in numerous documents beginning in the 12th century. Santa Maria del Bucito is recorded in a notary act of 19 October 1106 (Theotokou ton boukéton), in which Leonzio, bishop of Gerace, gave away the monastery of the Santissima Madre di Dio di Bucito and the revenues of S. Anania "due to the Santissima Chiesa cattolica Locrese", "venerabili templo (monastery) gloriosissime dominǽ nostre Deiparǽ et semper virginis Mariǽ".

"In that year the Church became aggregated to Santa Maria dei Buceti and entrusted to the Carthusian monks of Serra San Bruno". (Barillaro).

The name Bucito is recorded, also, in a document from 1119 signed by Nicola, son of Leone, presbyter and protopope from Bucito (Cod. Vat. Lat. 10606, page 14, with Latin translation on page 15 and page 17; in an act from 1139 [tès yperaghias Theotokou] and in a document of sale by Teodata, daughter of Giovanni Konges and of his family (originating from the region of Bucita) to the monastery of S. Michele and Nicodemo del Kellerana, dated 27 October 1181 in which appears a certain Ruggero, son of Giovanni Oto, lecturer and notary in Buceto.

A very ancient village of Basilian origin was at first named S. Maria di Bùcita (Vùcita or Bucìto), as Ottaviano Pasqua (1574–1591) writes in the life of Nicola II, bishop of Gerace from 1219 to 1229, who claimed the rights of the Mensa vescovile on the Cerchietto's property, "quod circum locos, quibus a S. Johannis oppido, et S. Maria di Bucita, Martonem hodie vacant, continetur" (Rossi, Sinodo, page 258).