sobering summer, with the first autumn rains finally back in command. Are you ready to travel back into the folds of the Middle Ages to the hunting of sacred groves and sanctuaries?
This time there to travel far from our headquarters, Perugia.
Indeed, we remain in the city of Griffin to lay eyes on one of the most enigmatic place known that the Middle Ages. The Benedictine Abbey of San Pietro.
Its location is already in itself a puzzle. When it started during the pontificate of Pope Sylvester (AD 337), that is little more than twenty years after the 'Edict of Milan with which the Emperor Constantine stood in defensor of Christianity, was immediately created the Cathedral of Perugia. It was the first in a long line here and we jumped in the eyes the first quirk. Yes, because the primitive church of San Pietro did not arise at all within the walls of Etruscan Perugia yet far away from them, a mile and 100 meters to be exact, surrounded by dense bush that surrounds a mound of Perugia, Monte Capraro or Comploiano. What was he doing in these parts of a cathedral, being a citizen, he should instead be within the city walls? Mystery. The fact is that in 936 AD the Bishop Ruggiero Elected to the city's new cathedral church of St. Stefano Castellare, ending so captive to the Christian community outside the walls of Perugia. For our beloved church began a gradual decline and abandonment that ended only thirty years later some Peter Vincioli , noble Montelagello (town not far from Marsciano). Vincioli, moved from the usual fervent devotion, had the brilliant idea of \u200b\u200binvesting part of their wealth to redeem the place of worship, now reduced to a heap of ruins and allocating it to the site of a Benedictine monastery. The choice worked well, so that the Council of Ravenna of 967 he was appointed the first abbot, and did not even wait for the consecration of new church reborn, celebrated Just two years later by Bishop Honest. The fact that Peter was an excellent example from the investment in subsequent years confirmed the continuing skirmishes between him and the new bishop Conon citizen, eager to steal the succulent tax privileges granted to the monastery in 1022 by papal bull of Benedict VIII, and even confirmed Barbarossa in a diploma dated 1163.
But leaving aside the historical anecdotes, what's so special about this church was more than being, like other monasteries in the dark Middle Ages, a bright tax haven?
We realize that going through the cloister, which was "smeared" over the original facade of the medieval church in the seventeenth century as a muzzle, making it unreadable frescoes. Not everyone, however.
Although aedicule left of the facade is dominated by a series of easy to read subjects such as a stand Triumph of the apostles Peter and Paul, the ' Annunciation to the Virgin Mary and St. George Knight intent on killing the dragon, beauty is in the right part of the facade. Built almost swallowed up in the new seventeenth-century cloister fresco surfaces a quite unique, the three-headed Trinity . It is a depiction of the Trinity, the school of Giotto and Arnolfo, who was known as heretical prohibited in 1628 by Pope Urban VIII in the Council of Trent. It is no coincidence that Valentino Martelli, who was the designer of this cloister, only fourteen years earlier, decided wisely pit of the fresco in the scent of heresy, without murarlo; his action today allows us to gaze at this' work and noticing another detail far more rough.
In the cloister of San Pietro, in fact, we are dealing with a representation of the Trinity is clearly feminine, so much to us suppose that in reality the figure seated on a throne gazing, we do not portray the Lord in spite of the patriarchal medieval philosophy, but is in all respects a Madonna.
How? A three-headed Madonna?
Despite the art critics who have dealt with so far is the fresco ostinino to deny the evidence, stating clearly that this fresco depicting a classic male Trinity, we can not just impertinent tourists get us through this strange mind idea. In fact, when Pope Urban that prohibits depictions of Trento ambiguous just as the Voltes Trifons , fearing the pagan influences that could generate those same influences which had been hurled against Luther, is it possible that behind the elegant workmanship of this fresco lurks a reference, not too cloudy, with a three-headed goddess of ancient paganism? It is possible that this improbable three-headed Madonna has something to do with the Greek goddess Hecate, the three heads?
To sketch an answer we must cross the threshold of the abbey church of St. Peter, for a moment abandoning its splendid cloister. What do you say, there's enough to keep everyone glued to the next post?
Bibliography:
• Mario Montanari, thousand years of the church of St. Pietro in Perugia, with its assets , Foligno, 1966. •
Martino Siciliani, 's Abbey and the Basilica of St. Pietro in Perugia: history and art , Genova, 1994.
• Giuseppe Maria Toscano , The many faces of Christ in art , Parma, 1991.
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