Ancient Busi Dynasty: Origins, history and expansion of this ancient and noble Dynasty

By Dario Busi

Spending part of his free time of over twenty-five years, in search of further certificates and historical documents on his own Dynasty in historical archives, historical libraries, parishes and municipalities, unifying and spreading part of the considerable amount of collected notes, the author has drawn up this work whose purpose is to be a historical compendium of the birth and worldwide evolution of the noble and ancient Busi Dynasty.Far from being complete, it also aims at being a spur for younger generations in order not to forget that their future is possible thanks to their past.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bibliomundi
• Release date: Dec 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9781526042774

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Spending part of his free time of over twenty-five years, in search of further certificates and historical documents on his own Dynasty in historical archives, historical libraries, parishes and municipalities, unifying and spreading part of the considerable amount of collected notes, the author has drawn up this work whose purpose is to be a historical compendium of the birth and worldwide evolution of the noble and ancient Busi Dynasty.

Far from being complete, it also aims at being a spur for younger generations in order not to forget that their future is possible thanks to their past.

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Ancient Busi Dynasty

Origins, history and expansion of this ancient and noble Bergamese Dynasty

Second edition, revised, updated and expanded. February 2021

On the cover of the book :

Knight Busi Giovanbattista, 10.01.1837 - 06.08.1891

The tree stands out

thanks to its roots

Summary

Preface

About the Arms

Golden Book of the Noble and Notable families

Blazon of the de’ Busi Arms of Val Brembilla

Valbrembilla, 7 May 2016, the first historical-world gathering of the Busis

Porto Alegre and San Paolo, 18-19 March 2017, gathering of the Brazilian Busi

Rosario, 21 April 2018, gathering of the Busi of Argentine

Historical-political context

The birth of the Bergamo territory

The Brembana Valley at the turn of the year 1000

Bergamo from the Visconti to Venice

Bergamo jurisdictions in the Venetian era

Autonomy of the Bergamo valleys

Self-government of the Bergamo valleys

The Companies of the Caravana and the Bastagi

Venetian policy for patrician and native families

The territory of Bergamo

The government of the Bergamo territory

The territorial organization of the Bergamo plan

Government, communication routes and security in the Brembana and Brembilla Valleys

Historical-economic development of Brembilla at the beginning of the 1900s

Origins and history of the Dynasty of Busi in the political-historical context of Bergamo

From the historical parish register of Torre de' Busi

List of Venetian Republic feudal lords

Cadastral situation Busi of Brembilla, Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia in 1853-1902

Brembilla, cadastral maps with Busi possessions, until 1845

Land registry in the Kingdom of Italy from 1900 to 1948

Some of the many registrations of sales or level contracts made by the Busis (documents from the State Historical Archives of Bergamo)

Recordings of documents of the Busi, Da Mozzo

Notaries where the acts of the Busi were made

Notaries Busi

Notary Musitelli Francesco fu Giuseppe, Brembilla 1672-1736, notarial 7775-7776

Notary Ambrosioni Gio 'Damiano fu Paolo, Brembilla 1778-1806, notary public 12581-12583 (documents from the Historical State Archives of Bergamo)

Notary Carminati Gio 'Paolo fu Battista, Brembilla 1785-1843, Notarial 10402-10407

Notary Carminati Gio’ Battista, Brembilla 1867 – 1881; notarial number 13546

Notary Pesenti Foja Melchiorre was Pedrino, Brembilla 1488 – 1493, Notarial 938

Birth and expansion of the Busis

The expansion of the Busi in Italy

Brembilla (Bergamo)

Brescia

Brescia: Botticino Sera, Botticino Mattina, San Gallo and Castenedolo

Casalmaggiore (Cemona)

Cremona

Florence

Mantova

Milano

Pavia

Parma

Siena

Turin

Treviglio (Bergamo)

Valdidentro (Sondrio) hamlet Premadio

Valtorta (BG)

Venice

Zogno (Bergamo)

The expansion of the Busis abroad

Argentina

Brazil

Colombia

France

Germany

England

United States of America

Appendix

Dario's family

The ancestors

The sundial and the flowerbed Arm

The Busi’s somatics

La spusì de Caoja (The jung bride of Cavaglia)

BUSI DARIO FAMILY TREE

Busi Angela genealogy

Busi genealogy in common with Giuseppe and Lorenzino

Giuseppe genealogy

Lorenzino genealogy

Pierantonio e Giancarlo genealogy

Busi Manuel genalogy from Bergamo

Genealogical of France linked to Brembilla

Jean-Baptiste, François, Sylvain, Claude

Busi Yves and Dominique

Galdino, Bortolo, Claudie

Pietro

Joseph Jean, Nicole

Basilio -Basile-

Philippe Antoine

Genealogical of Busi Paulette, USA

Genealogical of Mario, first son of Andrea and Giuseppa

Genealogical of Joseph, second son of Andrea and Giuseppa

Genealogical of Frank, third son of Andrea and Giuseppa

Genealogical of Peter, fourth son of Andrea and Giuseppa

Genealogical of Andrew, fifth son of Andrea and Giuseppa

Genealogical of Busi Paulette, daughter of Andrew, grandson of Andrea

Genealogical of David, brother of Paulette

Busi artists

Giovanni Busi known as Cariani, Bergamo – Venice

Emilio Busi, Bologna – Florence

Luigi Busi, Bologna

Lino Busi, Brescia

Adolfo Busi, Bologna

Arturo Busi, Bologna

Nunzia Busi, Zogno -Bergamo-

Eugenio Busi, Brescia

Nathalie Emmanuelle Rigaud Busi, Marseille, France

Jacques Busi, Zurich, Switzerland

Françoise Busi Hirschi, Andelot en Montagne, France

Basile Busi, Andelot en Montagne, France

Margarita Busi, Santiago del Estero, Argentina

Werner Busi, Lotte, Germany

René Busi, Osnabrück, Germany

Pierrette Busi, Viziville, France

Mariella Busi, Ravenna, Italy

Marcela Beatriz Busi, San Nicolas, Argentina

HINT of HERALDRY

Acknowledgments

Sources

Bibliography

Sitography

Preface

This second edition was born out of the need to expand and update the first book, with some documents received by the Busis scattered around the world which, following the first historical-world meeting in Italy and the meetings in Brazil and Argentina, were handed over to me. Their desire was to include them in this second edition, thus authorizing me to publish some sensitive data and photographs, under the current privacy legislation.

On this occasion I made some changes that in this work no longer reflected the historical-temporal events of the first book.

Initially dedicated only to my family, over time, with passion, continuing the research, curiosity got the upper hand and I became eager to be more comprehensive, including the Busis closest to us. Then expanding also to some Busis of Brembilla, our area of origin, then to those of the Lombardy area, ... and beyond. A book which, I think, should not be absent from the library of any Busi family member or relative.

On October 4, 1999 I finished my family tree with the first ancestor I traced, Giovanni, from around 1660. Continuing my research, in 2012, in the historical archives, I found Giovanni's father, Giacomo, from around 1635, both born in Brembilla. Being the main tree, I then added to it the trees of the various Brembilla Busi that were provided to me (2014 - 2015). Later I found the first ancestor of the Busi of Brembilla, the Count Busi Giovanni Battista (Gio'Batta) whose son Count Giovanni made a marriage contract with the Counts Suardi of Valcalepio (Arch. Cath.) in Brembilla on Wednesday 15 August 1352.

But the curiosity to know how many Busi there were and to hear their stories always pushed me further, greatly postponing the closing of the collection of these notes. Not an easy job, for the Busis were always very prolific and the branches that were born, very numerous, spread not only throughout Italy, but also into Europe, Africa, North and South America, India, Australia and the Philippines. For this reason the present work is far from being definitive, but it only wants to be a basis onto which, perhaps, someone else will be able to lay other bricks, also because a historical research would almost never end if it were not decided, at a certain point, to put an end to it: the amount of information and the places to go to retrieve it are so many.

However, at the end all these years, I have done nothing other than collect and copy historical data from various sources, integrate them with historical documents already in my possession, amalgamate them, mix them giving everything a certain order and try to lay them out with logic, hypothesizing and contextualizing the historical environment to that of the history of our Dynasty.

In 2012 I had the idea of collecting the work in a tome with the aim of giving it a chronological order. What you have in your hands is essentially a collection of historical documents, dedicated to the Busis, to historians, to lovers of surnames or Dynasties.

I am not a writer and this is not a historian's work, with all its associated limitations and flaws, for which I apologize to the reader. Anyone wishing to deepen the topics can consult the excellent books that I quote in the Bibliography and from which I took part of the information.

Carrying out a historical-genealogical research is not a simple task; first of all you must have a lot of time available (it's a great job for unemployed retirees and lovers of history), so you have to arm yourself with holy patience, you must not be allergic to dust, you must have a good intuition and some good initial assistance.

I also learned that you shouldn’t spend a lot of time from one search to another in the same environment (library, historical archive, etc.), because you inadvertantly run the risk of reviewing the same documents a second time.

Almost always, in handling these parched ancient documents, , I was overcome with emotion; holding a piece of history from four - five hundred years ago and beyond is not an everyday experience.

I was especially moved in such a way on Monday, March 3, 2014 when they brought me the Gold Book of the Titled Nobles from 1400-1500, in the State Historical Archives of Venice. A tome of about 40x60x15 cm. weighing about 6-7 kilos, all in leather, with studs, corner protectors and golden closures, thick sheets of parchment, sheets, not pages, numbered by hand only on the upper right corner. About halfway through the book a numbering had been skipped, but in return a number had been duplicated towards the end of the book, so the sheets in the end were finally numbered correctly. Since there was no index, I had to leaf through all the sheets and I got a lump in my throat when, turning a sheet, I saw our surname among the titles.

Leafing through the fiefdom book, on page 380 I noticed a transcription error, Buri instead of Busi among the titled nobles. I asked to speak to the manager who, after the investigation of the case, made sure the correction was made.

The biggest problem that I encountered during my research done occasionally and not full time of course, was to focus exactly on the objectives to be achieved. You have to make up a list of what you want to look for and try to remain faithful to it as much as possible ; yes, because as you continue in the search you are tempted to browse through other sources, other documents and large books, or look at documents that lead you to delve into other documents, thereby risking to lose the initial thread.

My research led me to find a small island off the Croatian coast of the Korculane archipelago, currently (November 2014) inhabited by 19 people, which is called Busi island, Bisevo in Croatian, located at the following coordinates : : N 45 ° 58'37 '', E 16 ° 00'42 '', with a beautiful sea cave on the eastern side, with translucent rock that, with the sun at its zenith, slightly illuminates it with a blue-silver iridescence.

The first documents of the Busi island date back to the early year 1000, but I do not know if the name was already in use before and in what language. A Benedictine monastery was founded at that time, but the continuous pirate raids led to its abandonment about two centuries later; only the local population remained and I doubt that any of them left the island to venture into the Bergamo area.

However, it seems that the name is due to the various small caves scattered around the island, which in Croatian are called biseve (holes) and which then later influenced by the Venetian language, became busi.

I found a mountain near Gorizia called Sei Busi, but there is no reference to our surname, it probably refers to the doline conformations of the same, the numerous natural karst cavities scattered on the mountain terrain.

Case Busi is a village near Pessola, in the municipality of Varsi, in the province of Parma. Location Busis is a small village between Alba and Nizza Monferrato in the province of Cuneo. Both these hamlets were named after the inhabitants who founded them, the Busi in fact. There is a Bussi hamlet in Villafranca Piemonte, in the southern province of Turin, which clearly had been founded by a Bussi family.

Busi is also the name of a small rural village in the province of South Khorasan, north-east of Iran, whose existence was noted by a 2006 census. It is not known exactly how many people reside there. Here too, I don't think there are any references that bind us and I exclude that in the past a Busi came from there so that he could escape the clutches of justice or perhaps his wife, but rather I think of a karst conformation of the ground that gave rise to the name of the village.

In the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 250 different ethnic groups of indigenous people live. One of these is Busi, which speaks the Busi language and lives on the Obudu Plateau, on the Oshie ridges of the Sankwala mountain range, not far from the border with Cameroon, but I think this is simply a pure phonetic coincidence !

One of the questions I asked myself since the beginning of this research and to which I have not yet been able to find a definite, but only partial, answer was : where did all our possessions in Brembilla come from ? who gave them to us ?

Initially I thought of the lands and woods that Venice sold for 100 ducats to the faithful with the sentence of Monday 9 September 1482 of the Court of the Venetian Republic of Bergamo after the expulsion of Brembilla’s people. I also thought of the border lands which were the subject of disputes between the districts and which on Saturday 13 January 1798 were definitively divided between the families of the districts concerned by mutual agreement and with a notarial deed; however, the historical documents showed that even before these dates the Busi had various possessions.

Another certain reference is given by the Land Registry of the Lombardy-Veneto Kingdom which goes from 1853 to 1902, which reports the maps with all the properties (and we had many).

In the end I drew some assumptions derived from historical-documentary logic, perhaps, I think, as historians would do.

In my personal historical archive I have a canvas map from the mid-1800s commissioned by my great-grandfather Busi Cav. Giovanbattista who, with the advent of the new land register, wanted to assign to his children the possessions in Cavaglia that they would inherit. In fact, on the map the plots of land and real estate properties are drawn with the related map numbers and inside this my great-grandfather wrote the names of the sons to whom the related land and houses would go, including the historical one of 1531.

Our mountains are not mentioned and I have not found to this date of research (November 2014) their origin and destination, presumably passed orally; such a hypothesis is confirmed by in the fact that it was my brother Santino who wanted to regularize the hereditary subdivision to us brothers of our mountain, which was done by notarial deed Vittorio Meda of Bergamo in June 1992, as there were no previous acts. Only the dowry of the wedding went to the daughters.

I made a rough calculation, starting from the area of land inherited from my father, to go back in time, as far as the family tree allowed me, to know, approximately, how much land possessed the first ancestor I traced (about 1635).

Clearly over the centuries there may have been variants that I do not know; also what the fathers gave to their children could be differentiated; it may be that perhaps the firstborn inherited more, then gradually less for the others. Perhaps some gave land only to the firstborn, perhaps some land was lost or gained for various reasons, especially in the medieval period due to the various conflicts typical of the time and internal struggles.

Maybe someone sold their share to migrate.

My father, Giovanni Busi, inherited from my grandfather Matteo 204,000 square meters of Angelini mountain, Anselì in the Bergamo dialect, exposed to the sun, further upstream and with a small cave from which a small spring flows (map cat. 438b); a piece of mountain north-east of Cavaglia called Corna Blaca with its wood, a house in the square of Cavaglia, stables and barns and a large pasture.

The brother of my grandfather Matteo, Battista Antonio, inherited the lower and less sunny part of Anselì with less value and therefore slightly larger (map cat. 438a), a house and a stable, currently owned by my cousins who live in France.

The brothers of my grandfather Matteo, Giovanni, Pietro and Massimo, inherited all of the Foldone mountain adjacent to Anselì, the houses and stables.

The Foldone and Angelini (Anselì) mountains, border the municipalities of Fuipiano al Brembo where there were the possessions of the Busi of Fuipiano and San Pellegrino. To the east of Anselì mount, flows the Angelini stream which marks the border with Monte Castello della Regina (Queen's Castle mount).

Angeli and hence Angelini, is also a branch of the Busi family registered in the historical archives of the Parish of Torre de 'Busi, this clearly indicates its origin. They have two heraldic coats of arms, one of counts and one of patricians. A branch of the Busi Angelini family still exists (2020) in Zogno, Bergamo. To the north of the town on State Road 470, on the opposite side of the Anselì mountain, there is the Angelini district with an ancient fountain and the patrician coat of arms on a house. The Arms of Counts Angelini have on the base the mountains, most likely because they were the owners, this leads me to assume that our mountain has reached us from them.

Making a comparison with the Lombardy-Veneto Land Registry of 1800, I calculated that roughly at the beginning of 1600 our House in Brembilla owned about 30,000,000 square meters. (3000 ha, 30 km / q) of land, including our mountains. To these are to be added the houses, stables, barns, of the districts of Gaiazzo and Grumello, the districts of Forcella de’ Busi and Molino de’ Busi.

Decidedly not bad. It is true that the mountains and valleys steal a lot of surface. Now let's imagine that we have a sheet spread on a plane equal to this surface, it certainly has a certain effect to see the covering horizontally, but if we take this sheet and spread it over valleys and mountains, the effect changes because we say the cover Horizontal or better, the horizontal projection, has decreased a lot while remaining unchanged the surface.

But when the first Busis settled in Brembilla around 1300, three hundred years earlier, what vastness of possessions did they have and, above all, from whom did they own them ?

Hard to say, the territory was certainly vast, not to mention the fact that it could have been a territory that extended into the adjacent valleys of Fuipiano al Brembo, San Pellegrino and Valtorta where the other Busi resided.

However, the dimensions could certainly have been those of one or more counties or fiefdoms, a deduction that is confirmed as a county in the historical documents found in the State Archives of Venice, as in the index of the Golden Book on page 8 we are registered as Counts ; county subdivided and thinned into the various branches of the House over the centuries, but of which I could not find an official document of origin, only subsequent records.

While, on the other hand, in March 1433 an attribution of Noble and Gentle Feud by the Venetian Republic was recognized, but even here only records of deeds certainly based on antecedent documents that at the time were viewed, but which I did not find.

I found documents of the notaries who drafted deeds of the Busi in Brembilla, San Pellegrino, Zogno, Ubiale, Laxolo, Sedrina and Valle Brembana from about 1600 to 1900. I found records of other documents describing what the document contained, but not finding them, until 1300, unable to know exactly what they contained (Da Mozzo).

I found some Busi notary, but strangely none of them drew up deeds for other Busi; with the mountain mentality I could think that they did not want to let other relatives know their economic situation or their business.

In these deeds I always saw as descriptions or hereditary successions or land sales, however, always between the Busi of the various families, already from 1600, as if everything had to always remain at the Family. There are very few documents of sales made to other strangers, probably for reasons of resentment between families or marriages or economic, difficult to establish exactly.

Who knows what went through their minds when they decided to make one choice rather than another, and who knows for what reason.

For to do this research work, I initially had to look for the rubrics, the general indexes where the notes of the person who made the deed were placed in a very succinct way (will, purchase and sale, liberation, emancipation, level, etc.) name of the parties, the date and the notary. Once you know the notary's name, you have to go and get the rubric relating to him and drawn up by him, in which, if the data of the first search match, there will be a number that is the chronological one of the deed ; with this you then go in search of the document concerned, with patience.

I then had other, more technical difficulties, such as interpreting the writing of notaries. As early as 1600 the type of writing was similar to ours, although in the 1800s there was a decline in intelligibility, perhaps due to the haste to draw up documents; modern times were already knocking on the door. Another difficulty was in guessing the abbreviations that they commonly used and here you must also have a lot of imagination and experience in trying to interpret those strange signs written on paper.

Going back in time we arrive at 1500-1400. Here I have not found indexes or headings of the documents that were all drawn up on large and thick books and you have to look for the documents one at a time by leafing through