PhD Program in Historical studies
The origin of the Sacri Monti
A Sacro Monte (Sacred Mountain) is a devotional complex generally positioned on a hill, on the side of a mountain or in any landscape far away from towns and accessible through a pilgrimage. Introduced at the end of the fifteenth century, with the Counter-Reformation, they spread in Italy, in Europe and in the New World during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Sacri Monti are significant for a visitor not only moved by religious motivations, but also in virtue of the artistic and historical significance that they have, in addition to the beauty of the landscapes in which they are immersed. Through a series of chapels or shrines, there are scenes and episodes from the life of Christ, Mary and the saints through paintings and sculptures, often of exquisite artistry. The historical motivation of the origin of the Sacri Monti goes back to the need, on the threshold of the Early Modern age, to provide Christians pilgrims with destinations that were closer and easier to reach than the Holy Land (the destination par excellence of pilgrims during the Middle Ages) or to distant sites such as Santiago de Compostela or Rome. In order to avoid long, expensive and potentially dangerous trips (in places where Christianity had long since lost military control) but at the same time to be able to carry out their duties as Christians in search of salvation after death, these “Holy Places” arose in Italy, generally at shrines, related to practices of piety, that preserved relics or hearkened back to Holy Land, perhaps through architecture and artistic representations. The Order of Friars Minor of Saint Francis, having returned from Palestine in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century, was responsible for the construction of the two structures that were a model for the next period: the Nuova Gerusalemme (New Jerusalem) in Varallo Sesia in Piedmont (but then part of the Duchy of Milan) and the Nuova Gerusalemme of Montaione in Tuscany. (photo: Sacro Monte of Varese).