Santa Lucia

About

The Santa Lucia Auditorium is a concert hall set up in the deconsecrated church of the same name, formerly Santa Maria in Pensulis, located in the historic center of Gaeta, in the province of Latina, on Via Ladislao, 27. It is the oldest church in the city, being the result of the 11th-century expansion of a pre-existing early medieval place of worship; closed to worship in 1966, it was deconsecrated in 1972 and is owned by the municipality of Gaeta. The building is, together with the church of San Giovanni a Mare, an example of Gaeta's Romanesque architecture, characterized by early Christian and Byzantine influences.

A primitive place of worship was built on the site of the present building between the 8th and 9th centuries. It was located in the built-up area of the city, had an orthogonal orientation compared to the present one, with the entrance on the ancient decumanus (today's Ladislaus Street); its length (12 m) was equal to the width of the present hall, and its width (about 6 m) corresponded to the first two bays of the present one. The church had a single nave, in the back wall of which was a small semicircular apse partly excavated in the rock. The interior was probably covered with a wooden truss ceiling and was illuminated by two mullioned windows that were located in the right wall and can still be seen, plugged, on the facade of the church (which has, in the lower part, a different wall face than the rest of the building, with inlays in opus spicatum, the arrangement of which, however, would not be the original one) and by two single-arched lancet windows that are also currently walled in and visible inside the building, in the first two bays of the left aisle above the ancient entrance door.

The early medieval church was probably dedicated to the Salvator Mundi (not to be confused with the church of the same name in Caetani alley, currently reduced to a state of ruins) and it would be the same building mentioned under that title in the Codex diplomaticus cajetanus in 887 along the platea maior (which can be identified as present-day Ladislaus Street), a document in which it is stated that the priest Mellitus, operating in San Salvatore, received in emphyteusis a warehouse with workshops located in the city from Count Giovanni, son of Ramfo. The same writing also mentions the nearby church of St. Benedict, which then, by 1024, would acquire its title. The indication given by Salvatore Ferraro of St. Lucy as dedicatee of the original building from a 976 document of the Codex diplomaticus cajetanus within which, in a dispute concerning the goods of the church of St. Nicholas on the island of Zannone, reference is made to a Giorgio, archpriest of the church of Santa Lucia Martire, would be erroneous in that it would refer not to the building in Gaeta but to the demolished church and deaconry of Santa Lucia in Septizodium in Rome. In a report compiled in 1591 by Bishop Alfonso Laso Sedeño for the Royal Chamber of the Sommaria, the parish of the same name is described as one of the absolute oldest in the city, along with those of St. Peter, St. Thomas and St. George, which is why the parish priest was entitled to wear the mitre, a tradition that fell into disuse in the 19th century. The Duke of Gaeta John III promoted restorations to the church.

In the 11th century the church was rebuilt taking as a model the abbey basilica of Montecassino, rebuilt by Abbot Desiderius starting in 1066 and consecrated in 1071. The axis was rotated by 90°, so that the ancient facade was incorporated into the left side wall; the environment assumed a basilical plan of early Christian derivation, with three naves separated by arches resting on bare columns and covered with a truss ceiling. The Gaetan church, in its new layout, differed from the Desiderian basilica in the absence of a transept, and had an appearance similar to that of the basilica of Sant'Angelo in Formis, near Capua, or the church of Santa Maria in Foro Claudio, in Ventaroli ( Carinola ). As part of the same intervention, a bell tower with a quadrangular base was also built.

Beginning with the reconstruction of the 11th century, the church assumed the titling of Santa Maria in Pensulis (due to the frequent presence in the area of hanging gardens ), first witnessed in a 1218 document relating to the donation to the monastery of Sant'Erasmo in Formia of a dwelling located near the church, and also present in the deed of foundation of the Sanctuary of the Santissima Annunziata (1322); it was maintained until the entire seventeenth century, as evidenced by two tombstones present inside the church and respectively dated 1480 and 1681, before being replaced by the current one, which had been in place alongside the previous one since at least the second half of the fifteenth century, being mentioned for the first time in the 1459 census.

The church underwent restoration in the 13th century, probably following the earthquake of June 1, 1213, which had its epicenter under the Aurunci Mountains and caused extensive damage in the surrounding area, within which the city of Gaeta was situated. At that juncture, the original wooden-beam roofing was replaced, in all three naves, with rib vaults ; for this reason it was necessary to reinforce the walls by providing them with buttresses (in the left side aisle) and increasing their thickness (in the central aisle). Throughout the Middle Ages, from the 8th-9th centuries until the 15th, the interior of the church was enriched with frescoes, in some cases even covering the older ones.

During the stay in Gaeta of Ladislaus of Durazzo, king of Naples, and his wife Costanza Chiaramonte, who stayed together with the court in the city from 1387 to 1399, the church of Santa Maria in Pensulis performed the function of palatine chapel because of its proximity to the palace where the sovereign resided.

The Renaissance and Baroque interventions

During the following centuries the church did not undergo substantial changes, which allowed it to maintain its medieval structure almost unchanged: the interventions conducted were aimed at enriching the interior of the building with decorative elements in Renaissance and Baroque style.

In 1456 the parish priest Giuliano D'Orca commissioned a triptych depicting the Coronation of the Virgin, to be placed above the high altar, from the painter Giovanni da Gaeta, who later also painted a Crucifix for the church. During the 15th century a number of side altars were built along the minor aisles.

In 1646 at the behest of the parish priest Giambattista D'Aino (or Daino) Della Croce, the church underwent a major restoration in a Baroque style: the interior was enriched with sober stucco and scagliola decorations placed to adorn the underlying medieval structures, assuming an appearance somewhat similar to that of the present collegiate church of San Pietro in Minturno. Four new altars were built in place of the previous one, dedicated to St. Joseph, St. Philip Neri, the Crucifix and St. Lucy, respectively. The high altar was incorporated within a gilded wooden retable placed immediately in front of the apsidal arch: the two side sections consisted of as many arched niches richly decorated with bas-reliefs and containing the statues of St. Peter (left) and St. Paul (right), respectively, while the central one was formed by Giovanni da Gaeta's triptych inserted within a cornice; the latter, attributable to the carving circle of Giovanni Francesco Mormando and consisting of a tall entablature with a bas-relief frieze, supported by two twisted fluted Corinthian columns and surmounted by the statues of St. Erasmus (left), St. Marcian (right) and St. Michael the Archangel (center), was probably the front part of the pipe organ built in the 16th century for the Gaeta Cathedral ; in the fields left empty at the top by the triptych were painted the Evangelists. Above the retable, completely occluding the apse, was a rich stucco decoration depicting a velarium held open by two angels, which departed from a wooden crown of considerable size.

In 1654 the church, in addition to being a parish church, became the seat of a chaplaincy, founded by the parish priest D'Aino and entrusted to the priest Francesco Varlone; there was also a confraternity dedicated to St. Philip Neri, which met at the altar of the same name, witnessed in 1751 and no longer present in the second half of the following century. New restorations were conducted at the behest of parish priest Francesco Orecchia Sales, at the end of which, on July 13, 1755, Bishop Gennaro Carmignani of Gaeta consecrated three new altars:

Erectis ex Marmore lapidibus / tres Aras consecravit / Ill(ustrissimus) e(t) R(everendissimus) D(ominus) Ian(uarius) Carmignani / Ep(iscopus) Caietanus / A(nno) D(omini) 1755 die XIII m(ense) Iuli Templum hoc Prior Curatus / Fran(ciscus) Orecchia Sales / Ornavit eodem anno Having made the marble altars, the most illustrious and reverend lord Gennaro Carmignani, bishop of Gaeta, consecrated three altars on the 13th day of July in the year 1755. This temple was restored the same year by prior curate Francesco Orecchia Sales. —Tombstone to the right of the apse

On May 8, 1765, the same bishop proceeded with the dedication of the church:

Templum hoc Ill(ustrissimus) e(t) R(everendissimus)/ D(omi)nus Ianuarius / Carmignani Ep(iscop)us Caiet(a)e / consecravit Die 8 Mai(i) / 1765 The most illustrious and reverend lord Gennaro Carmignani, bishop of Gaeta, consecrated this temple on May 8, 1765. —Tombstone to the left of the apse

During the 19th century the church, which was too small to be readapted for military purposes, continued to be the site of a parish and to be regularly officiated, although it was in a precarious state that would be repeatedly recorded until the intervention of the 1930s. In 1852, Giacomo Guarinelli, a major and commander of the Engineers, as well as an architect who was also active in Gaeta at that time for the neo-Gothic expansion and rebuilding of the temple of St. Francis, was commissioned to restore some of the city's churches including that of Santa Lucia, where he particularly wanted to recover the cosmatesque fragments of the floor and the bas-reliefs then considered part of the cathedral 's ancient and lost ambon ; the work never took place. Onorato Gaetani dell'Aquila d'Aragona, mayor of Gaeta in 1870-1876, wanted to transfer the parish to the nearby church of Saint Catherine of Alexandria during his term in office in order to turn the once-deconsecrated church of Santa Lucia into a museum of art and local history.

The restorations of the 20th and 21st centuries

Between 1934 and 1937, the church underwent a radical restoration conducted by Gino Chierici at the behest of historian and Minister of Education Pietro Fedele (originally from Minturno ) and Archbishop Dionigi Casaroli of Gaeta.

The structure was consolidated and all the Baroque decorations removed, and the church was reduced to an extreme bareness; all the altars (including the high altar made of scagliola ) were also demolished, except for the marble altar placed at the apse of the early medieval church. The new high altar was made by reusing as a mensa the tomb slab of Bishop Carlo Pignatelli (who died and was buried in the church of Santa Lucia in 1730) placed on two small columns, and by assembling together the remains of two ancient plutei, previously walled in at the sides of the apse; the artifact consisted of cosmatesque mosaic elements and, at the sides of the tabernacle, four 13th-century bas-reliefs depicting (from left to right): the Eagle, the Angel, a Griffin and a two-tailed Mermaid. The wooden Renaissance retable was dismembered, retaining only the 1456 triptych by Giovanni di Gaeta and the frame within which it had been inserted at a later date; the triptych by Giovanni da Gaeta was removed and underwent restoration in 1956, to be then displayed, together with the painted Crucifix by the same author, at the Diocesan Museum; above the altar remained the frame, empty.

The flooring was also redone, bringing it to an intermediate height between the hitherto existing one and the original one, removing some of the tombstones that were part of it by repositioning them along the walls of the church, and restoring fragments of cosmatesque floor mosaics, which were concentrated in the presbytery area. At the same elevation of the latter (raised a few steps above the rest of the church), the floor of the last bay of both minor aisles was also brought. On the façade, the most recent layers of plaster were removed to expose the ancient wall face and the windows of the upper part of the elevation were reopened, as well as the plugged mullioned windows were made visible again.