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Giovanni Mattera

(Serrara Fontana 1852-1933). Hermit of Epomeo, "philosopher rude and uncommunicative", which, after 42 years, was forced to leave the hermitage after a measure of Serrara Fontana that a group of islanders, in an appeal to the citizens and authorities, called "violation of law by the guardians of the law". In 1926, after two years, he was recalled and brought back to Epomeo, where he hosted and Carbonari climbers, tourists and carpenters, poets, generals and princes (the king Vitt. EmanueleIII), "offering everyone the same straw bed and the same glass of hard liquor, at dawn, as the mist that rises from the valley brings out the tops of the mountain like a sea of gray rocks blacks".