The events of the 1173 siege – including Stamira's heroic act – were narrated some years later, in 1204, by
Boncompagno da Signa, in the
Liber de Obsidione Anconae. Of this, three copies remain: one is kept in the Vatican, the second in the
National Library of Paris and the third remained unpublished until 1723, when it was bought by Father Auriberti of Brescia, from which the text was translated and published by the historian
Ludovico Antonio Muratori in 1725. In the Nineteenth Century this copy was again sold and transferred to
Cleveland, Ohio. Muratori, after long research on the history of Italy – especially on the Medieval Period – published the "Annals of Italy", a major work recounting Italian history up to 1749, and giving considerable attention to the Heroine of Ancona. Muratori called her “Stamura”, and this version of her name was long current. In 1848 the publisher Pier Carlo Soldi of Florence brought out the novel “The Siege of Ancona in The Year 1174” by the
Italian Nationalist writer Giuseppe Cannonieri of
Modena, written while Cannonieri was living in exile at
Blois, France. In this account the story of Stamira/Stamura is made into a full-fledged
historical novel in the manner of
Alexandre Dumas. “Stamura" is given as her family name. The heroine's first name is given as Maria, and she has a daughter named Virginia. She is the widow of Pietro Stamura, a Milanese citizen, who for being opposed to the troops of Barbarossa, was brutally tortured and killed together with other Lombard patriots. (The manner of his death is described at great and horrifying detail). At the time of her heroic self-sacrifice, Maria Stamura is engaged to Guglielmo Gosia, son of Martino, Mayor of Ancona, and is a friend of the priest Don Giovanni da Chiò, another hero of the siege of 1173. All of the above details are entirely fictional, derived from 19th Century invention. Of the actual historical woman, hardly anything is known beyond the bare fact of her having been a widow. Still, the fictional account had a considerable popularity during the struggle for
Italian Unification. Since that time, she is often characterized as “An Italian Patriot” though this designation is an
anachronism when applied to a person who lived at a time when Italy was divided into numerous, often mutually-hostile principalities and city states. In 1877
Francesco Podesti, himself a native of Ancona, made for the Earl Ragnini a painting of Stamira. Another Podesti painting depicted
The Oath of The Anconetani, also an incident of the same 1173 siege. The Stamira painting was eventually donated to the city of
Bertinoro, in appreciation of the intervention of Aldruda Frangipane, Countess of Bertinoro, which ultimately helped lift the siege. The canvas is placed at present at the office of Mayor of Bertinoro. ==Debate on the correct spelling of her name==