Family Broili

The History

What is in a name?

Broili is a word of Celtic origin (Brogilos). In Friulano and Italian (Brolo) it denotes an enclosed place, a plot, generally speaking an area around a house. In Siaio there is a place that had this name since the Middle Age: this is what we can read in the testament of Giroldo q. Pietro da Siaio, written on 15.01.1349. In this testament the good man bequeaths to his church a garden situated in Siaio “ante broylis” (opposite to the broili). Later on, in different documents, we can find people names with the appellative “de Broili”, or better, in the local language: “de Breili”. Obviously these persons were part of the family living in this area and only later Broili became a surname. The Broili were a family of cramârs, as we can infer from some evidences of the beginning of the XVII century. In the year 1608, for example, a certain Leonardo Broili from Siaio, was summoned in Udine by the Father Inquisitor because he was charged, together with some fellow townsmen, with having not observed the precepts of the Church during the time he was in Germany. On 17.08.1607, “Appollonio De Cilia from Treppo, guarantor for Giovanni Del Broili from Siaio, tried to ask back the money (286 lire and 8 soldi) he had had to pay out on behalf of his defaulting protégé. Later on, Giovanni del Broili, in the name of De Cilia, had to mortgage in his turn the ‘domum suae propriae abitationis… campum et pratum vocatum Sot la Strade…”. There were many cramârs mortgaging their property in order to scrape together the money required to buy something to sell in the Countries of Central Europe. Now, Giovanni was the forefather of the characters of the event we are going to narrate.