Journey to discover the hermits in Valnerina: from the Madonna dello Scoglio to that of Sant’Antonio Abate up to the hermitage of Stella and the Blessed Giolo da Sellano.
Hagiographic texts such as the Acta Sanctorum of the Bollandists (the Flemish Jesuits who in the 17th century published a monumental work, divided into 53 volumes, dedicated to the lives of the Saints, including Felice and Mauro di Narco) refer to evangelizers who arrived from ancient Syria to Valnerina between the 4th and 6th centuries. According to the historians Bracceschi and Jacobilli, the Syrian infiltration became massive only from 516, when 300 Syrians landed on the banks of the ancient Nera, whose work of evangelization there was strongly hindered by the millenary rooting of ancestral paganism. Ludovico Jacobilli writes: “In the year of our salvation 516, 300 Christian men, almost all relatives, left by vow from the cities of Antioch, Jerusalem, Caesarea, Tyre, Sidon and Damascus of Syria. Driven by the holy desire to serve God, they abandoned relatives, friends and homelands and came to Valnerina under the guidance of one of them, the oldest and most eminent, who was called Mauro”. According to the historian Jacobilli, the father of San Felice di Narco would therefore have been both the spiritual guide of the 300 Syrians who arrived in Italy in the 6th century and the founder of the hermit movements of which Valnerina still preserves the remains today. Thus, monasticism of Eastern influence was integrated with Benedictine cenobitic monasticism, which responds to the name of a monk who became an icon of spirituality and mysticism: Benedict of Norcia, born in 480 and later became the Patron Saint of Europe.
Two Syrian Monks and a Hermitage Shrouded in Legend
In the rocky habitat of the Val di Narco, near the Nera River, Mauro finds a cave where he leads a hermit life of work, prayer and fasting with his son Felice and his nurse. Among the Narcani, that is to say the inhabitants of the Val di Narco, the fame of those prodigious hermits soon spreads, deserving even to be cited by the pontiff Gregory the Great in the Dialogues as models of life and sanctity. The hermit settlement of Mauro and Felice, evokes, in particular, the killing of the deadly dragon that reigned in the Val di Narco, whose presence is particularly recurrent in medieval Umbrian hagiography. The dragon is nothing other than the allegory of the pestilential epidemics that, due to the continuous overflowing of the Nera, decimated the population relegating it to unheard of suffering. Today, in correspondence with that hermitage of which no traces remain, stands the Abbey of Saints Felice and Mauro, a pearl of Umbria and an icon of Valnerina in the world.
The Hermitage of the Madonna dello Scoglio, the story of an ancient apparition
Near Casteldilago, in the municipality of Arrone, there is the characteristic sanctuary of the Madonna dello Scoglio which stands in a panoramic position leaning against the rock face from which it takes its name. Built on a hermit site, it is made up of a former sacristy and a small church where a fresco is venerated, Madonna with Child, painted on the rock and many painted ex votos which testify to the centuries-old devotion of the faithful. In the summer it is the arrival point of a traditional procession at the end of which the local men, armed with rifles, shoot in the air from one side of the valley to the other. The building, of sixteenth-century origin (enlarged in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries), was built around an image of the Madonna painted on rock (a generous dispenser of graces, according to tradition) which appeared on the site to G. Pietro Lelli, a nobleman from Casteldilago.
Polino and the hermitage of Sant’Antonio Abate, when popular devotion meets Spoleto Romanesque
When trying to describe the hermitage of Sant’Antonio architecturally, a rather singular fact immediately catches the eye. The settlement, in fact, is made up of two distinct sections: the cave – consecrated to Sant’Antonio Abate and most likely already the site of pagan celebrations – and the Romanesque church, whose Renaissance portal is supported by a small bell gable. Inside, some frescoes of uncertain dating and two statues: Saints Anthony of Padua and Anthony the Abbot. The hermitage is located at the foot of Monte la Croce, along the mule track that goes up from Polino to Cava dell’Oro, used in the past to reach Monteleone di Spoleto. Every year, two evocative processions head to the hermitage, first in January and then in June, starting from the Church of San Michele Arcangelo, to give thanks to the two saints to whom the hermitage is consecrated. During the celebrations in honor of Saint Anthony the Abbot (January 17), the faithful are accustomed to mark their knees with the water that gushes from the rock to prevent or cure arthritis and rheumatic pain.
A hermitage turned into a church
Near the Valnerina State Road, in the immediate vicinity of Piedipaterno, there is the church of the Hermit (former Vallombrosian monastery of Santa Maria de Ugonis). Built on a hermit site, this structure has unique characteristics compared to the Romanesque style widespread in Valnerina and has played a role of primary importance as one of the major religious centers of Valnerina. The church, built in the 11th century, has the entrance door (upstream) towards the mountain road which at the time was the main communication route given the impassability of the valley floor invaded by the waters of the Nera. The Greek cross crypt is its distinctive feature, the only example in the area. Inside, with a single nave, there are remains of frescoes from the 15th-16th and 17th centuries, including a Madonna with Child by the Maestro di Eggi. Some valuable works have been stolen over time, such as the highly venerated wooden statue of the Madonna dell’Eremita (13th century) which, after being stolen in 1973, was accidentally identified in a Milanese art house and subsequently donated to the local community in 1998 by the last owners.
Blessed Giolo da Sellano and that hermitage on the borders of Umbria
Blessed Giolo (or Jolo), was a hermit born in Sellano in 1250 and died in 1315. In life he stood out for his ability to resolve conflicts between families and municipalities in the area by living a life of prayer and penance. His best-known miracle is the one that tells of a habit full of burning coals that he brought into the cave without the garment burning. The strong popular devotion meant that Giolo the hermit was called blessed by the local population with the approval of the bishop of Spoleto who granted the possibility of celebrating him starting in 1780. The cave where Giolo lived is located in an inaccessible location on the northern borders of the municipality of Sellano beyond the town of Forfi. The place is still very popular today with devotees who believe in the healing power of its rocks and its waters which, according to tradition, free people from illnesses. The small church of San Lorenzo was built near the cave around the 16th century.
The Hermitage of the Star, “where you can see nothing but two palms of sky”
The historical events of the Hermitage of the Madonna della Stella date back to the 8th century when, at the confluence of Valle Noce and Valle Marta, along the ancient routes that, coming from Leonessa and Cascia, flowed towards the Gastaldato Pontano and then towards Spoleto, capital of the Lombard duchy of the same name, the Monasterium S. Benedicti in Faucibus or in Vallibus arose, subject to the Abbey of S. Pietro di Ferentillo built in 720 by Duke Faroaldo. The Sanctuary of the Madonna della Stella and the hermit caves opened in the rock face are located in a shady narrow passage, Valle Noce, between Monte Maggio and Monte Porretta. Framing the path that leads to the Hermitage, a clear stream that rises on the eastern slopes of Monte Porretta, forming a small waterfall a short distance from the Sanctuary. As the historian Marco Franceschini wrote, those ancient hermits chose to live “between two very high mountains, where you can see nothing but two palms of sky.” Nothing distracts attention from meditation and prayer in this place.
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