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Death at the Gates:
The Church of S. Giovanni Battista

[image ALT: An old stone masonry wall along a street sloping upwards to the right at about 10°. It has three doors, the central one raised from street level by two steps, and with an ogival arch; the other two with simple round arches. Above each there is a stone escutcheon. It is the façade of the church of S. Giovanni in Monteleone di Spoleto, Umbria (central Italy).]

We are standing just inside the Porta del Borgo, the main gate of Monte­leone, with S. Giovanni on the west side of the corso Vittorio Emanuele rising into town — and behind us no room to back up and take a better picture.

Location is everything. If this little church is the first thing we see as visitors to Monte­leone, to generations of Monte­leonesi on the other hand, it is the last thing they see, ever: right next to the gate out of town toward the cemetery is the logical place to put a burial chapel, and S. Giovanni has served as such — as the headquarters of the Confraternità della Buona Morte, the town's burial guild — for centuries.

[image ALT: A stone escutcheon, bearing a simple cross, on the façade of the church of S. Giovanni in Monteleone di Spoleto, Umbria (central Italy). Beneath it, a small carving of a lamb carrying a cross-topped rod.]
[image ALT: A stone escutcheon, blazoned on this webpage, on the façade of the church of S. Giovanni in Monteleone di Spoleto, Umbria (central Italy).]

Over the center door, a plain cross and beneath it the Paschal Lamb; over the right and left doors, the same coat of arms, repeated: quartered, ––––– two fesses ––––– and chequy –––––, where those blanks represent the colors that I can't tell you — nor, perhaps, can anyone else.

All three escutcheons date to the 15c, and the Lamb is a century or more earlier.

The interior of the church is a simple rectangular space with no aisles, totally redone in the neoclassical style not very long ago, most likely in the late 18c or early 19c.

[image ALT: A rectangular hall with a high, prominently-arched ceiling from which hang several chandeliers; at the end, under a rectangular stained-glass window, an altar. It is the interior of the church of S. Giovanni in Monteleone di Spoleto, Umbria (central Italy).]
[image ALT: A patch of decorative stucco relief work depicting a skull and crossbones and a banner reading 'SODALITIUM MORTIS'. It is a detail, commented on this webpage in the caption of this image, of the interior of the church of S. Giovanni in Monteleone di Spoleto, Umbria (central Italy).]

High over the church, at the top of an arch (near the large chandelier), a witness to its vocation as the last station of the dead:

Sodalitium Mortis — the Guild of Death.

From this church on the first Sunday in September, a time of year almost always marked in Umbria by splendid weather, the Madonna della Misericordia leaves in procession thru the streets of Monte­leone, and the holiday is celebrated by Mass, festive eats and a prize drawing. The image of the Virgin, however, I was unable to see nor do I have any information on it; I'm not even sure it is still kept in this church as it used to be.

[image ALT: An elaborate carved wooden casket consisting of a box without sides, the top of which is supported only by four slender corner pillars. On the bott of the casket lies a life-size statue of the dead figure of Christ. It is the Cristo Morto in the church of S. Giovanni in Monteleone di Spoleto, Umbria (central Italy).]

Along the right side of the nave, though, another image is kept: the veiled body of the Cristo Morto, the Dead Christ (close-up) which in many Italian towns is the focus of Good Friday observances.

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Page updated: 29 May 12