The Church of the Purgatory in Tortora once stood outside the city walls. As a sacred place set apart from the town, it marked the metaphysical boundary of the world of the living, a function that can be deduced from its funerary purpose1. Its location, which was later swallowed up by urban expansion, was not chosen at random, but rather in response to a specific cultic purpose. Indeed, the construction of the building made it possible to sacralise that peripheral and unsafe area. At the same time it confined the areas designated for death. While Tortora was located “at the foot of the Tower” of the feudal fortress in the Middle Ages, as it was called at the time, the Purgatory Chapel remained in the éremos (ἔρημος), in the transcendent and solitary space.
Eastern monasticism in the Mercurion
Probably Greek-rite anchorites set some of the symbolic elements in the church of Tortora. Between the 8th and 10th centuries, many Basilian monks settled there, having fled the Arab conquests of Egypt and Palestine. Later, religious also came from Greece because of the iconoclastic struggles that followed the edict of Leo III the Isaurian.
Many of these hermit monks, following the example of, among others, Saint Nilus of Rossano, settled in a mountainous area of the Calabrian-Lucanian Pollino2, called Mercurion because of the cult dedicated to Mercurius of Caesarea3. The area became a monastic laura, which was perfect for this purpose due to its abundance of woods and natural ravines, also thanks to a political tolerance it benefited under the Byzantines and Longobards.
The village and the Church of the Purgatory in Tortora
There are also many clues suggesting the presence of Basilian monks in Tortora. The village is perched on a high rocky spur at an altitude of about three hundred metres. It appeared inaccessible at the time, resembling a hermitage. For the same reason, between the 9th and 11th centuries, the inhabitants of the Roman colony of Blanda Julia took refuge ther4, abandoning the ancient maritime settlement which was vulnerable to Saracen raids. They gathered around an ancient Lombard-era fortress known as Castello delle Tortore, located inland.
The cultural heritage of the Basilians and Greek-Byzantine hermitism undoubtedly played a part in the construction of the first Purgatory Chapel, built at the same time as the village. We have evidence of this in the original name given to the building. A notarial deed of 15545 attests to its dedication to Catherine of Alexandria, a saint venerated in Egypt, especially in the famous monastery on Mount Sinai. The reference to Purgatory, instead, is due to the 18th-century paintings in the church. Perhaps to the one on the wooden ceiling, in which Our Lady of Mount Carmel intercedes for the souls of the dead, or to the similar one on the façade, now unrecognizable. However, we can found the most important clue to the influence of Basilian-Calabrian monasticism in Tortora on the portal’s archivolt, which features six reused bas-relief blocks6. Its mysterious sculptural symbolism will require some interpretative hypotheses.
The Church of the Purgatory in Tortora
The oldest chapel in Purgatory underwent substantial renovations in the years following its construction. Moreover, it is possible that it was completely rebuilt after a series of disasters, including the 1638 earthquake.
Today, the chapel has a simple structure with a square plan and a single apsidal nave. The gabled façade, facing south, has at the top a graceful bell gable. It seems to be dated 1701, probably placed during one of the reconstructions, but the inscription is debated7. A string-course cornice divides the front of the church into two orders. A flower of life, just below the bell tower, dominates the upper portion, once coloured red. Two rectangular windows flank a large niche, that preserves fragments of the original fresco of the Virgin of Mount Carmel.
A stone portal, carved with bas-relief figures, difficult to interpret, dominates the lower order of the Purgatory Church of Tortora. Although the wooden door refers to the date of 16888, one can easily deduce that the ashlars are older. We can attribuite the style to 12th-century Basilian-Calabrian craftsmen. It is possible to find similar sculptures in the church of Sant’Adriano in San Demetrio Corone and at the Panaghia in Rossano9.
A depiction of the zodiac
The iconography of Tortora portal is not easily readable: the animal figures in the bas-reliefs appear damaged. In addition, the six archivolt ashlars were not in the original order. This is evident in the figurative continuity of elements that were once juxtaposed but are now separated by other panels. The blocks feature flattened images from the medieval bestiary, which correspond to certain zodiac constellations, as suggested by Biagio Moliterni10.
From left to right we find: a winged animal, similar to a griffin, but more likely a lion with wings to emphasise Christ’s dual nature, terrestrial and celestial; a ram; a scorpion; two figures that are almost indistinguishable and resemble fish; a beast with a bow, symbol of Sagittarius; a cancer flanked by twin lions.
As mentioned, this is not the order intended by the sculptor. The arrangement of the blocks most likely reflects the order of the constellations along the ecliptic. We can deduce this from the fact that the tip of Sagittarius falls partly within the Scorpio panel. It is unclear why only some zodiac signs appear on the portal rather than all of them. However, it could also depend on a decision made when the blocks were reused. We do not know what the original work looked like.
Cycles of the cosmos
What was the iconographic meaning of the work? Why was a zodiac, an apparently pagan theme, depicted on the façade of the church in Tortora? Firstly, this is not an unusual choice; we can find many examples of constellations in Romanesque art. This is the case with the mosaics of San Savino in Piacenza or the well-known Portal of Nicholaus at the Sacra di San Michele in Val di Susa.
These figurative cycles underlie a cosmological view of existence, conceived as the repetition of regular cycles in the heavens and on Earth. Thus the sun sets in the evening and rises in the morning, the seasons repeat the same every year. Also is for the zodiacal constellations, associated with certain months, which mark the time of sowing, reaping and harvesting. It is in this context of agricultural cycles, to which Medieval peasant society was linked, that the significance of Tortora Portal can be explained. Thus, the zodiac, reinterpreted in a Christian perspective since the 9th century11, is no longer connected to pagan myths, but marks the time of human activities according to God’s will. He is the Lord of all creation and to his providence depends the success of harvests.
The astronomical symbolism at the Church of the Purgatory in Tortora
It is no coincidence that plant motifs, representing the vegetal world, are present throughout the sculptural cycle. Four-lobed leaves appear above both piers of the Tortora portal, at arch imposts level. Near the figure of Sagittarius, the sign that precedes the period of vegetative dormancy inaugurated by the winter solstice, there is a six-petalled flower, a solar symbol.
Two worm stilophore lions at the base of the doorposts also represent the same symbolism. The sculptures face each other, with one placed to the east and the other to the west in consideration of the south-facing orientation of the façade, in the direction of sunrise and sunset. Indeed, a rising sun-flower surmounts the right lion, while the jamb of the night has no such symbol. Thus, the two lions representing Christ serve as guardians of the sacred space during the day as well as in the deepest night.
Samuele Corrente Naso
Notes
- B. Moliterni, Monica De Marco, Lo zodiaco della Cappella del Purgatorio in Tortora, in Esperide, cultura artistica in Calabria: storia, documenti, restauro, Anno 1 n. 1, gennaio – giugno 2008. The authors refer to another mention of the church, contained in the Apprezzo of the fiefdom written by Gennaro Sacco in 1692. ↩︎
- B. Cappelli, Il Mercurion, in Il monachesimo basiliano ai confini calabro-lucani, Napoli, Fausto Fiorentino Editore, 1963. ↩︎
- S. G. Mercati, San Mercurio e il Mercurion, in Archivio Storico per la Calabria e la Lucania, anno VII, fasc. III-IV, 1937. ↩︎
- P. Mollo, Un insediamento greco-romano nell’alto Tirreno cosentino, in Calabria Letteraria, a. XXV-l987; G.F. La Torre e A. Colicelli, Nella Terra degli Enotri: Atti del convegno di Studi Tortora 18-19 aprile 1998, Pandemos, 2000. ↩︎
- Ibidem note 1. ↩︎
- P. Orsi, Archivio storico per la Calabria e la Lucania, Editrice Monte Giordano, Roma, 1934. ↩︎
- Ibidem note 1. ↩︎
- Ibidem note 1. ↩︎
- B. Cappelli, Recensione all’elenco degli edifici monumentali LVIII-LX, in “A.S.C.L.” n. 10, 1940. ↩︎
- Ibidem note 1. ↩︎
- Codice lat. 387 della Österreichische Nationalbibliothek di Vienna, figure on page 90v. ↩︎
