Cremasque Territory

The Cremasque Territory (, ) is a geographical area located in the Lombardy, corresponding to the northern part of the Province of Cremona, of which it represents the most industrialized and densely inhabited area. Its main center is the city of Crema and currently constitutes one of the 4 employment districts into which the province of Cremona is divided.

History

The identity of the Cremasque territory and its inhabitants has been formed and consolidated around the city of Crema in the course of a centuries-old history, full of significant and lasting events that have distinguished and characterized this particular geographical area in a specific way.

The first documentary quotes of the locality of Crema date back to the 11th century and, since 1084, it is constantly defined as ''castrum Cremæ'', that is, a castle or a village protected by a belt of walls. If the historical certification of Crema is relatively late, its development as a center of attraction and power in the Fulcheria Island, the territory with ill-defined borders that surrounded it and to which is well attached the name of "island" because it is enclosed between the Adda and Serio rivers whose course widened into large swamps, called Lake Gerundo. The first written testimony of the name ''Insula Fulchéria'' (or ''Insula Fulchérii'') dates back to February 1040, when the bishop of Cremona Ubaldo went to the court of Emperor Henry III to submit to him a document that would have granted the Cremonese diocese the ''districtio'' on the ''Insula Fulcherii'' at the expense of Boniface III of Canossa, margrave of Tuscany, who held it for feudal investiture.

Since this date, Cremona's interest in Crema and the Fulcheria Island is evident. Located close to the risorgive line, in a dominant position with respect to the waterways and land, at the intersection of the main north–south and east–west communication lines (Bergamo-Piacenza, Milan-Cremona, Brescia-Pavia), Crema and the Cremasque territory were a territory "in formation", strategically important although still unsustirable and unsuitable for cultivation because mostly covered by woods and above all by swamps and marshes, heritage of an ancient sea or Lake Gerundo and constantly fed by the numerous fountains. Water was therefore the characteristic element of the whole area, enclosed and intersected by important rivers ( Adda, Tormo, Serio and Oglio) and frequently subject to their violent floods if not even bed variations. It is not excluded that a spontaneous or artificial change of the bed of Serio, bringing it very close to the nascent city of Crema, together with the intense reclamations started in that eleventh century, have contributed to stimulating the expansionist aims of the much more powerful nearby cities (Milan and Cremona in particular) in a period in which there is a general degradation of the feudal institutes and the Curtense economy alongside the re-flowering and repopulation of the cities and the strengthening within them of the new grades dedicated to craftsmanship and commerce, that city bourgeoisie that, organized in influential arts and crafts guilds, will obtain increasingly relevant political and economic powers until it achieves effective independence from the feudal "lord" and imposes the new municipal structures.

In 1335 Crema and its territory were annexed to the Duchy of Milan.

Starting in 1449, the Cremasque territory became part of the Republic of Venice, constituting a quasi-exclave included in the Duchy of Milan; a fortified and manned road, called "la Steccata" connected it to the Bergamo territory between Castel Gabbiano and Sola.

The Diocese of Crema

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