Anna Sama sat down today to tell me about her story of coming to America. She hails from Sant'Andrea Dell'Apostolo. It is said that the town dates back to the 10th century, between 981 and 110. This was an era when the Greco-Byzantine population from the nearby Fiume Assi moved to the territory around Sant’Andrea to escape the repeated Saracen raids. At that time Sant’Andrea belonged to the Badolato farmstead. After 1044, the village was under Norman rule, as was the rest of Calabria, when it acquired a new status thanks to the Carthusian charterhouse, Grancia della Certosa di San Bruno, which became the centre of public life. A ‘Grancia’ is a building that forms part of a charterhouse, used for the preservation and provision of agricultural produce, which was to sustain of the monks of the order. In 1193, the Pope believed that the Carthusian monks were no longer living by their original moral values, but were guided by political and economic interests. For this reason, he handed it over to the Cistercian hermitage, Serra San Bruno ai Cistercensi, along with the ‘grancia’. It was under Cistercian ownership until 1513, when Pope Leone X of Medici reassigned the charterhouse to the Carthusians. They were to finally lose its profits to Joachim Murat, Marshal and Admiral to Napoleon, in 1808, when the San Bruno Charterhouse was abolished. Have a listen

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