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S. Angelo del Rosario in Búdino

A Witness to the Via Flaminia

[A large barnlike stone building with a shallow-sloping gabled roof. On this side, we can see 2 small rectangular windows on the upper floor, but no windows or doors on the ground floor. It is the ruined abbey church of S. Angelo del Rosario near Budino, Umbria (central Italy).]

The old Benedictine abbey church of S. Angelo del Rosario is now in ruins: for at least the second time in its history, it is being rebuilt.

In this pulled-back view, we see that it has been used as a farmhouse; compare the more recent farmhouse, built as such, on the main Budino page.

[MissingALT. It is a detail of Roman masonry in the façade of the church of S. Angelo del Rosario in Budino, Umbria (central Italy).]

A careful look at the lower courses of stone: those large neat blocks of travertine came from some Roman building connected with the Via Flaminia that passed just a few hundred meters S of the abbey.

Around the side of the church, we see more of those large solid blocks of Roman stone: as very often thruout Umbria, the medieval masons put them to the best use, strengthening the corners of the building.

[MissingALT. It is the entrance door of the church of S. Angelo del Rosario in Budino, Umbria (central Italy), and a Roman sarcophagus in front of it.]

The Roman presence becomes clearer still with the sarcophagus. Budino lies just off the Via Flaminia 4 km from Foligno and 3 more to Bevagna: both towns were large, and in the tombs that accumulated over the centuries along the road, there must have been no shortage of watering troughs and other building material.

Moving thru the Middle Ages and to our own times, the buildings of this little abbey in its somewhat isolated pocket of rural Umbria have seen their share of ups and downs: mostly the latter as the abbey slid to the status of a priory, then by the 16c to that of a chapel officiated the bare minimum of once a year required by canon law; and eventually settling into the role of a church-run farm. Some parts were demolished or repurposed as utilitarian farm buildings. A partial timeline of the process can be gathered from the very good page at Luoghi del Silenzio, which pretty much sums up what little can be read in various medieval sources. All the more interesting then the plaque below, in which we see an enterprising local priest managing to secure some high-level funding to keep the church alive, probably in an effort to reinvigorate his rural parish:

[MissingALT. It is an inscription, detailed on this page, on the church of S. Angelo del Rosario in Budino, Umbria (central Italy).]

Pio Sexto Pontifici Maximo
Quod
Curante Philippo Trenta Fulginatium antistite
adiuvante Dominico Rubeo ab intimo principis sagrario
renascentia sanctioris aerarii subsidia
fundis Flaminico patrimonio adiunctis
erexerit ditaverit auxerit
Devotum Numini MaiestatiQue Eius
positum monimentum
ad memoriam posteritatis sempiternam
A · MDCCLXXXIX

To Pius VI, supreme pontiff
— because
thru the agency of Filippo Trenta, priest of Foligno
with the assistance of Domenico Rubeo of the privy purse of the prince,
renewed subsidies from the sacred treasury
having been added to the funds for the Flaminian patrimony,
he built, enriched, and expanded this church —
Devoted to his spirit and majesty
this monument was placed
for the eternal remembrance of posterity
in the year 1789.

The funds and purpose of the late‑20c renovation have not yet been marked with a tablet; when the work is done, I hope there will be one. Since Sant' Angelo has not been used as a church for many decades, and frankly, since there are neither the parishioners nor the priests, nor probably the monastic community in search of a home, to warrant returning it to liturgical use, I suspect it will be converted to an agriturismo at some point.

I took the photos on this page in 1997. In 2024, more than a quarter of a century later, although a new concrete house has in the interim sprung up right next to it, the historic buildings were still not restored, although bristling with scaffolding; I'm glad I saw Sant' Angelo when I did.