ST. VIVALDO

The Franciscan convent of St. Vivaldo, declared national monument, introduces him as a romantic and wild place, almost isolated by the world whose name and whose history they are tied up to an ancient episode of loneliness and prayer.

An unusual series of events ago of this place a "unicum" of the art and of the western culture. From 1185 to 1280 we know him/it in possession of the Monks of the Cross of Normandia that, they probably guarded the ancient chiesetta of Saint Maria in Camporena, while the first news of one "Ecclesia San Vivaldi" they are had in 1220. From this we must deduce that the name doesn't derive from the blessed Vivaldo Stricchi from St. Gimignano, the hermit that, in the first halves 1300 isolated him and it died in these places in odor of holiness, whose death said beginning to a veneration that has spread up to our days.

The legend narrates that the dead body of the hermit was found in the cable of a gigantic chestnut tree that, in life, you/he/she had used as it resides, and that the believers destroyed because each wanted a piece of the tree to bring away as relic. On the roots of the chestnut tree an oratory rose that, widened in 1416, reconstructed in 1426 and submitted to the Smaller Monks of St. Francis since 1497, it became the church that can admire today still.

What distinguishes the convent of St. Vivaldo from other Franciscan convents it is the whole tempietti and chapels, that are found in the wood around the church, that constitutes the denominated complex "Sacred Mountain."

In the medioevo the phenomenon of the pilgrimage in Earth Saint assumed important dimensions, because people wanted to see of person the places where Jesus had lived, you/he/she had been crucifix and you/he/she was risen, but the trip was difficult and dangerous since Palestine was checked by the Turks therefore, it was tried to get a substitute of such trips reconstructing the Saints Sepulchres and the places of the Earth Saint.

In the forest of Camporena the complex was built between 1500 and 1516 from Among Thomas from Florence, that wanted to found that that was defined "the Jerusalem of the Valdelsa", reproducing in a series of chapels the sacred places in the Jerusalem of Palestine, according to a mystical itinerary that reconstructed the episodes of the life of the passion and of the death of Jesus. Among Thomas, that had precise information, probably consequential from a direct experience, having been for many years in the East and it was also in contact with Bernardino Caimi, that in that same years his/her Jerusalem planned to Launch him/it Sesia, it chose the place with such accuracy that, during recent studies, you/he/she has been possible to verify the rigor with which you/he/she had tried to reproduce the topography in the sacred Jerusalem. He had identified in a deep woody gorge the Valley of Giosafat, in the relief that constituted the south border of the gorge the Mountain of the Oil you, in the natural ledge, to north, the Open space of the Temple while, more over, a hillock turned him into an ideal Calvary Mountain.

Subsequently they were assistant other episodes (the Annunciation, the escape in Egypt, the Samaritana), also following an earthquake that had destroyed some chapels; in one "Note of the Mysteries" of 1685 remembers 28.

In little time the "Sacred Mountain" it assumed a lot of importance, so much that in the 1516 Pope Leone X granted the indulgences for the devotees that hastened you numerous, while in the 1528 Pope Clemente VII it confirmed her and it set the convent under the protection of the Captains of Part.

In the time, however, the zone of the Valdelsa lost importance, it became earth of border and it isolated him so much that, in 1722 the convent was declared "withdrawal for punishment of the priests" from Pope Innocenzo XIII and from the Granduca Cosimo III, in 1808 you/he/she was suppressed and in 1887 the Franciscan Monks returned.

In 1971 they are initiated complexes jobs of restauration, concluded with the suit recovery of the "Jerusalem" of S. Vivaldo.