Church of San Giuliano

About

San Giuliano (Italian: Chiesa di San Giuliano, literally "Church of Saint Julian") is a Roman Catholic church in the historic centre of Erice, Sicily. It is one of four parish churches in the town, alongside the Chiesa Matrice (Mother Church), San Cataldo, and Sant’Antonio Abate.

According to tradition, the church was founded by the Norman ruler Roger I of Sicily (the “Great Count”), though some sources suggest earlier Christian origins. It was rebuilt between 1612 and 1615 as a larger structure with three naves.

The church is documented in medieval ecclesiastical records. It was described as a parish church in the 1423 testament of Archpriest Bernardo Militari, an important cleric of Erice who later sponsored the construction of the portico (gibbena) of the Chiesa Matrice in 1426.

In 1926, part of the building collapsed and the church was closed. After almost eighty years, it was reopened on 26 December 2005.

From 1951 a marble statue of Saint Albert, originally donated for the high altar of Sant'Alberto, was placed in the piazzetta San Giuliano outside the church, where it remained until 2015. That year the statue was returned to Sant’Alberto and reinstated on its altar after restoration.

The church preserves the Misteri, sculptural groups depicting the final hours of Christ’s life. Adjoining rooms are dedicated to ceroplastics (wax modelling), an art form practiced since Roman times and, in Erice, by the Carmelite nuns of Santa Teresa.

The feast of San Giuliano is celebrated annually on 22 May. It is considered one of the oldest devotions in the Trapani area, with roots traced to the early centuries of Christianity. The celebration traditionally includes a solemn Mass followed by a religious procession through the streets, in which a statue of the saint is carried by the faithful. The last such procession before the church’s collapse took place in 1965, and the tradition was revived in 2013 after the church’s reopening.

The veneration of San Giuliano in Erice has been associated both with the martyrdom of Julian of Anazarbus under Decius (254 AD) and with the medieval figure of Julian the Hospitaller.