Скачать или смотреть Spoleto Archbishops Palace and Church Saint Eufemia Chiesa di Santa Eufemia - Spoleto Italy - ECTV

The church of Sant'Eufemia is located in Spoleto in the courtyard of the archbishop's residence, in the historic center.

It is difficult to pinpoint the period of construction of the basilica, in this regard historians have not reached a unanimous position. Artistic fragments and many capitals carved with non-medieval art, could suggest its existence already in earlier times, but it is important to keep in mind that the remains of ancient monuments were frequently used to build new buildings.

The oldest records date back to the tenth century, when Spoleto was still the capital of a powerful duchy; they are contained in a document written by a monk Giovanni di Montecassino, entitled Passione di San Giovanni[1].

Before the area was probably occupied by the residence of the Lombard dukes, which also included the palace chapel. To it, built in honor of St. Euphemia virgin and martyr, was added a monastery of Benedictine nuns founded by the abbess Gunderada, perhaps of Germanic origin.

Around the year 980, under the reign of Otto II of Saxony, the nun discovered in Spoleto the body of the holy bishop of Spoleto John II (bishop from 492 to 546, presumably the year of death), martyred under the Goths commanded by Totila[2], and ordered its translation within the church.

After this event the name changed to the Basilica of San Giovanni, a name it kept until the fifteenth century.

A few years later Berta, the abbess who succeeded Gunderada, commissioned Giovanni di Montecassino, hagiographer, a Life of St. John, in order to spread the wonders and miracles that took place in the church after the translation; the writing, entitled Passion of St. John, is precisely the first documentation relating to the church and the monastery[5].

A copy is shown in a text of 1911 by Luigi Fausti[6]; he questions the veracity of the facts narrated in it, and claims that it was precisely from that document that numerous historians were misled and a heap of errors arose that distorted the news on the origins of the monastery and the church, creating confusion between the seventh and tenth centuries, between the devastation wrought in Spoleto by the Goths in 546 and that wrought by the Saracens in 881[7].

According to a document reproduced in a fresco of the Bishop's Palace, in 1017 Emperor Henry II ceded the monastery to Count Acodo, perhaps also a prelate, at the behest of Archbishop Eribert of Cologne. Even this document, however, has raised among historians many doubts of authenticity[8][9]. In any case, a change of ownership and a different intended use marked the closure of the monastery.

A few years later, on the occasion of the expansion of the cathedral, the bishops had to abandon their residence, then located behind the Duomo, and move to the premises of the monastery which underwent considerable expansions and transformations to become a bishop's palace.

Towards the middle of the fifteenth century it changed its name again, took the name of the church of Santa Lucia, probably at the behest of the Venetian Marco Condulmer at that time at the head of the Spoleto diocese. In the same period a triptych of the local school was made for the main altar, depicting the Virgin assumed between St. John and St. Lucia, now preserved in the Diocesan Museum.

In the following centuries, in particular from 1500 onwards, the church underwent deleterious renovations that disfigured the building: it was divided into two floors, the ground floor remained reserved for worship, while the upper floor, divided into different rooms, was annexed to the bishop's palace; the façade was plastered and the small bell tower demolished. (10]


Altar with frontal
It remained so until 1907 when, thanks to the intervention of the Spoleto archaeologist Giuseppe Sordini, the complete restoration of the structure was carried out, completed in 1954 by the Soprintendenza Umbra[11].

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