Description

The history of the Madonna della Stella hermitage goes back to the 8th century, when the Monasterium S. Benedicti in Faucibus (or in Vallibus) rose at the spot where the Valle Noce and the Valle Marta meet, along the ancient routes that ran from Leonessa and Cascia toward Castaldato Pontano and then toward Spoleto, capital of the Lombard Duchy of Spoleto.

Subject to the Abbey of San Pietro di Ferentillo, it was built by Duke Faroaldo in 720 A.D.. The building of the monastery along this important road is connected both with the policy of the dukes of Spoleto to control the area and, more in general, with the evangelization and spreading of monasticism in the mountains.

In the Cascia area alone, eleven monastic cells and about fifteen Benedictine monasteries are documented for that period. Indeed, starting in the 5th century some Syrian monks had spread the eastern monastic experience throughout the Valnerina, with various cells which led to the founding of the Abbey of Sant’Eutizio in the Valle Castoriana near Preci, and later that of San Felice near Sant’Anatolia di Narco.

Along with their evangelizing, the monks also worked to drain the marshy valleys, as is attested by the slaying of the dragon by St. Felice and St. Mauro carved into the façade of the church of San Felice. Nor should it be forgotten that in 480 St. Benedict was born in Norcia. In his name monastic aspiration took concrete shape with the founding of a myriad of cells and monasteries. Later, the decline of the Benedictines throughout the area from the 13th century on favored the establishment of another order, the Augustinians, which eventually took possession of the properties and monasteries the Benedictines had abandoned. Thus it was that in 1308 the Lateran Chapter granted the lands to the friars Andrea da Cascia and Giovanni da Norcia, hermits in the order of St. Augustine of Cascia, with the sole obligation to pay one danaro every year for the Church of San Benedetto on St. Benedict’s feast day. There must have been some lingering dispute between the two orders, however, because in 1337 the Lateran Chapter felt the need to confirm the previous grant with a new deed.

Returning up the narrow valley, the two hermits began building the present-day hermitage, which took the name of Santa Croce in Valle. Along with the new church, built in part by digging out the rock, a dozen or so monk’s cells were added, also built by digging into the rock and adding walls. Thus a kind of laura was created where the recent cenobitic experience was combined with the older monastic tradition of the eastern hermits.

The community life of the church and the refectory (the latter located on the adjoining square and of which only a few friezes remain) alternated with that of silence and meditation in the honeycomb of cells carved into the rock. This type of monasticism can be found in other parts of the Valnerina as well, in particular at Sant’Eutizio in Valle Castoriana.

In 1416 the church of Santa Croce was adorned with a fresco cycle. Starting from the right, there is a small Pietà, followed by a larger Pietà with the bust of the Dead Christ emerging from the tomb and the Archangel Michael slaying the dragon. Next is an Enthroned Madonna and Child between St. Peter and St. Paul, set inside a false mosaic frame. This is followed by a triptych with St. Lucy holding two torches between St. Benedict holding the book of his Rule and St. Catherine of Alexandria holding her wheel. A wall separates this cycle from the triptych in the sacristy, which portrays an Enthroned Madonna with St. Augustine and St. Gregory the Great. The date in gothic script can be seen at the bottom of the sacristy triptych, which is the fresco in the cycle that has suffered the most damage.

As the years passes the Augustinians of Cascia also began to desert this place of worship, such that in 1459 a mendicant friar was appointed for Santa Croce, a clear sign of the need to provide for the absence of a regular presence there. On his apostolic visit in 1571, De Lunel reported to have found the church ruined, with its incomes going to the nearby castle of Roccatamburo. The place was nearly lost to memory, when in 1833 two shepherds from Roccatamburo stumbled across a painting overgrown by brambles, and it was shouted that a miracle had occurred. The people from the nearby villages began to worship there again, and offerings from the faithful were used to restore the church, which was renamed Madonna della Stella from the star-like pattern of clothing worn by the Madonna painted on the rock wall.

After that the hermitage was kept by volunteer hermits, the last of whom was Luigi Crescenzi of Poggioprimocaso, still remembered by many elderly locals. He served at the hermitage from 1919 to 1949, the year in which he died after falling from the square in front of the monks’ cells.

The Marian devotion has remained strong among all the mountain people, and every year in May there are many processions from the nearby villages that wind up the steep path to renew the devotion that has been passed down through the generations.

Roccatamburo, to whose parish the church of Madonna della Stella belongs, and which has always maintained it, has the honor of being the first to repeat the tradition on the first Sunday in May.