The origins of Aidone can be traced back to the foundation of Herbita, a Greek city of exceptional importance.
The ancient village of Ayn-dun (water source) consisted of a small basilica church and small houses lining the Bukarit River, roads and aqueducts connected it to ancient Herbita (Morgantina).
In 827, during the advance of the Muslim army, Aidone was occupied, its strategic position allowed the Muslim army to attack the nearby Castrum Hennae (Castr Janni).
In 1076 AD Count Roger I of Hauteville and his knights conquered Aidone.
The town centre of Ayn-dun was delimited by an access gate which coincides with today’s Town Hall Square; following the ancient Roman road one reached the top of the Castle.
Upon Roger Machabeo’s death, his titles and all his possessions went to his sister Adelasia. Countess Adelasia was a very religious woman who held the quality of life of her subjects in high regard. She built several mills and numerous monasteries and churches in her lands. In 1134, she built the Church of Santa Maria Lo Plano in Aidone, along with the Benedictine Convent.
Countess Adelasia ensured the successful development of the town of Adone, as did the development of the nearby Piazza, a state-owned city first assigned to Count Enrico del Vasto and then to his son Count Simone, son of Enrico and Flandina, Adelasia’s aunt.
He had excellent relations with his cousin Count Simone Adelasia, so much so that he had the Church of S. Andrea built in Piazza.
The Gallo-Italic dialect of Sicily.
The dialect spoken in Aidone, but also in Nicosia, Piazza Armerina, San Fratello, and Sperlinga, is called Gallo-Italic by linguists. These dialects, especially in their earliest stages, differed from Sicilian in phonetic, morphological, and lexical characteristics. Their origins date back to the Norman and Swabian rule of Sicily, from the 11th to the 13th centuries, when immigration from northern Italy was encouraged to rebuild and repopulate towns and regions devastated by war.
The areas of origin were primarily Lombardy, Piedmont, and ancient Cisalpine Gaul, hence the term Gallo-Italic and the relative similarity to French that is striking even to the uninitiated. In Aidone, the somewhat isolated location, as well as its proximity to Gallo-Italic Piazza Armerina, favored the preservation of the dialect for many centuries. Then, the need for communication and trade favored its convergence with Sicilian.
The vernacular form, preserved in written documents (especially poetic compositions from the early twentieth century) and in the current use of a few speakers, had already undergone morphological and lexical impoverishment in favor of Sicilian and maintained its phonetic results for a longer time. At the beginning of the century (1902), A. Ranfaldi wrote in a sonnet: “A ddinga ch’ogn giurn us a v’rsùra, Nan eia com a cudda c’tatìna” (the language I use every day in the countryside is not like the city language), effectively testifying to a situation of bilingualism that still persists: the vernacular spoken in family and rural environments and the “Sicilian” reserved for the public square and for foreigners.