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As I wandered around the castle hamlet of Migianella de' Marchesi, at the time (February 2004) weedy and seemingly deserted, one building stood out from almost every angle, as we saw on the first page: its church, or more properly the belfry we see here. Square stone belfries with the occasional course of brick are seen thruout Umbria; they often belong to the sixteenth or seventeenth century. Here, the church itself is unusually small for so prominent a tower; not counting the sacristy, it consists of a single room accommodating maybe no more than forty people standing close together; properly it is a manorial chapel as we find often enough attached to castles in Italy. It fronts on a patch of weeds so narrow that a straight photograph of the façade is not possible. Not to worry, you're not missing much, except for the inscription over the door:
· E · S · MA=
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Ecclesia Sanctae Ma-
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The church of Saint Mary, and of the Most Holy Cross |
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It's unusual to see hyphens and commas in inscriptions: I suspect this marks it as a 19c or 20c pastiche rather than the 16c or 17c plaque it is meant to look like. A further mystery is that the church has historically been titled St. Michael, as you read on my first page; isolated churches on the tops of hills and mountains often are, both generally thruout Western Europe and in Umbria at Acquasparta, Cortigno, or Limigiano, for example.
When I saw the chapel, in 2004 — you can read my diary entry written the same day — it was being worked on, clearly after some years of neglect and possibly vandalism. |
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In the years since my visit, the church has reverted to its original name, and been nicely restored. Migianella houses no permanent local population, so the chapel is only used for the occasional intimate wedding.
The elegant Renaissance niche over the main altar, remarkable for its depiction of the Cross as an anchor — in Christ is our Hope, toward which lean the other two crosses of the sinners crucified with him — is no longer empty. |
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Residenza di campagna Migianella dei Marchesi |
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Page updated: 30 Dec 23