The good Gherardo and his two sons

Here is another case of a father, brilliant and powerful, with two sons: one obedient, but weak, and a reckless, violent and daring, which leads to revolt, and therefore to ruin, all the "company branches" that are entrusted to him. Result? Very fast and irreversible shoulder strap. We are talking about the Trevigiana da Camino family, the “good Gherardo” whom Dante praises, in Purgatory, for the hospitality received. Lord of Treviso since 1283, he was also captain of Feltre and Belluno, after the bloody parenthesis of Ezzelino da Romano, and is remembered as an example of enlightened lordship, even if exercised with lucid determination: in 1298 he had the bishop killed, for example di Belluno Jacopo Casalio, to free the site that he wanted to assign to his son Guecellone. The family succession was Gherardo's most serious mistake. In addition to his beloved Gaia, sent in marriage to a cousin to mend the tensions between the two branches of the Caminesi, Gherardo - who was also the head of a large Guelph party, together with the Collaltos and other important families - bet everything on the two sons, Rizzardo and Guecellone. The first is ambitious, but uncertain; the second violent and unreliable. Yet, as happens to many fathers, Gherardo was unable to be lucidly rational, trusting that the experience in the field would temper the talents of the two sons. Instead, the exact opposite happened. Gherardo was aware that the only one capable of guiding the delicate political-administrative mechanism of the Caminese state was Rizzardo; so he designated him to succeed him at the helm of Treviso, Belluno and Feltre, while the young Guecellone left the government of the current Vittorio Veneto, wedged between the possessions of his brother, to prevent him from doing too much damage. But the situation worsened with the death of Gherardo in 1306. Rizzardo immediately initiated a series of unsuccessful political and military actions which soon led to scorched earth around Treviso and its family. At first, in 1309, he tried to be nominated captain general of Friuli, coming to detain and blackmail the Patriarch of Aquileia who surrendered; however the charge was not ratified and da Camino himself had to flee, a move that precluded any further Caminese attempt towards the East. In the Venetian chessboard, moreover, Rizzardo distinguished himself shortly after for the about-face with which in 1311 he betrayed the centuries-old Guelph alignment of his family, passing to the Ghibellines: he obtained the title of imperial vicar, but antagonized Venice, ending up being judged unreliable by both the parties and losing the support of the great Treviso families, who plotted their elimination. He was killed while playing chess, in 1312, by a conspiracy apparently plotted by his brother Guecellone who, in fact, immediately became lord of Treviso and did not even try to prosecute the perpetrators and principals of Rizzardo's death. But Guecellone was even more unreliable and violent than his brother and, after a few months of government, he was expelled from Treviso, retiring for ten years in Belluno, where he was feared and hated until the city was liberated by Cangrande della Scala in 1322. Guecellone he barricaded himself in his last castle, Serravalle, where he died two years later, in 1324. The Caminesi family died out with his son, Rizzardo III, who died without heirs in 1335 killed in battle, just as happened, by the Patriarch of Friuli. As you know, it takes decades - in this case centuries - to put together an extraordinary family heritage ... and the wisest and most powerful father does not find the clarity to understand that those two sons would have led to the fall of the family in a few years. family and the loss of everything! Paternal love, to be such, in truth must be able to judge the real potential, perhaps favoring the true vocation of one's children. Deciding for them, placing them in roles they will never be able to play positively, does not do them or the family good. Much less the company. Certain errors of judgment, irreversible, are paid at a very high price.