Churches on top of churches on top of houses on top of temples

Santa Maria in Camuccia is a local church that has been closed for the last 20 years; the last priest died and has not been replaced for the parish.  The church itself was built after Napoleon's times to replace the (decommissioned) church below that had been built around 1000.

Michael & I had had the opportunity to get the nickel tour with my parents when they first arrived, and during the live Nativity, we went into the old church area to acquire props.  However, this time I actually arranged a visit with the (volunteer) archaeologist and art restorer who's working in the space.

If the tour before was a nickel tour, this was a hundred-dollar tour.  He spent more than an hour and a half explaining everything he knew about the site -- which is a lot!

Jim (my father-in-law) did a fantastic job of describing our adventure in his Picasa site.  I'll just add a few notes to his.

Back in the good old days (Roman times), there was a temple to Venus (here called "Aurea").  Just nearby is the still-standing Porta Aurea, which helps confirm some of the speculation...  It's unclear exactly when or why it was filled in, but regardless, around the 4th century (AD), there was a Christian house above the site of the original temple.  Of course, there may be something in between the temple and the house.  To this point, they've only excavated down to the Roman house (which has some sections that are punctuated by bones and structures coming from above), including a kitchen, some pavements, and so on.

Later, the site was filled in to level it in preparation for a church office (the location for some of the trials during the later Inquisition).  There was a street that went between the office and two small churches of the time (we think around 1000, but I may be misremembering), and another street intersecting that one at a right angle, going steeply down the slope (presumably with steps!), and an aqueduct.  There were troughs at which one could water animals or take water, conveniently situated to encourage donations to the church.  A little farther away (still under the present-day church) is a Roman well; you can see the grooves in the edge stone where ropes have worn through over the centuries.  The walls of the buildings were also frescoed; fragments remain as well as charcoal sketches of potential frescoes that weren't carried out.  How cool is that? At this time, the small churches and the church office were papal lands.

The Dominicans, who resided on top of the hill, were somehow evicted to make way for city offices or buildings.  They went to live with the Franciscans, who are down in the Borgo district of Todi (inside the walls, but on the other side of the hill).  Sexist comments about women living together aside, they had a hard time getting along, and eventually separated themselves with a wooden door (shown in Jim's pictures next to Carlo -- the IHS emblem in a sun is easily discernible).

The pope finally gave some land to the Dominicans -- you guessed it! The very plat we're talking about under Sta. Maria in Camuccia -- to build a new abbey.  They co-opted the larger of the two churches to become their chapel, used the church offices, built dormitories above and storage areas below.  They closed in the streets with archways, created a mortuary area in one spot (a serious need during plagues), and a garden in a courtyard.  The lintel to the refectory door remains -- and says "Don't eat too much" (essentially) in Latin.

A word about burial practices at this time (once again, let's say between 1000-1300).  Bodies were covered with quicklime in a mortuary to dissolve the "juices" (as Carlo put it so eloquently), and then the bones were buried in the church floors.  This fulfilled a logistical requirement as well as a spiritual one: space for burials was limited, and the Christians wanted to be buried in sanctified ground.  (Side note: Americans are squeamish about walking over graves -- Europeans are generally much less so, since they have to every time they walk through a church!) Nobles and other special folks had the opportunity to be buried without the preliminary decomposition, and had their own special tombs (hence the engraved stones -- don't assume that if a stone's not engraved, there's no one buried there).

Carlo told us that the soil conditions had worked to mummify rather than decompose the corpses.  They have removed all the stones at one time or another to examine the graves, and the bodies are nearly completely intact, including clothing & hair.  One nobleman was buried in 1609 in full monk's habit, hoping to convince God that he'd been a good person his whole life.  Makes one wonder whether he thought his God was stupid!  Rather perplexing.  The nifty thing about this is that the city has archives going back to 1000 (more or less), and they were able to figure out who this guy was -- and no, he was no holy man!  There's also some marking on one wall saying, "So-and-so was buried here" with an arrow pointing down.  And, sure enough, some bones!

During the inquisition, some of the offices were used by the tribunals.  They converted the smaller church into a prison, from which Mass could be observed in the larger church.  There was a possible privy or well or ...? inside the cell.

Napoleon put paid to the religious use of the church.  He rapidly decommissioned the building, and from that time it was used as a storage area.  The central part of the wall behind the altar was smashed through to put in a larger door, and so on.

Once Napoleon and his henchmen had left, it was decided to build a church on top, partially (or completely) using the Dominican dormitories (I believe).  This became Sta. Maria in Camuccia, which was in use continuously until the most recent priest died...5 years ago? 10?  Reports differ widely.  Side note: another person told me that most of the excavations were carried out by this priest singlehandedly over a period of about 50 years.  There are boxes and boxes of bones in one storage closet, and an amazing collection of artifacts (sorted by approximate time period).  They have a bronze Etruscan amulet from who-knows-when (one of the oldest of the area), one of the first glazed intact jars from around 1000 (which Carlo just propped casually under one arm), and so on.  Many plaster molds for statues -- praying hands, faces, etc.  A cannon ball, undated.  Roman pavement.  Seventeenth-century canvas altar screens. Pipe segments filled with accretions (including one where they'd attempted to clear it with a rod unsuccessfully and had had to break out the piping!), portions of marble veneer used over wooden structural members (did you know the Romans did that?  I didn't), and so on.

Dialectical note:  here in Todi, "potto" means "small child" and "potti" is the plural.  It's a corruption of "putti" meaning "cherubs" or "little angels" -- and is generally used throughout Italy as a figure of a child (as in, a statue, not a live critter).  There's a grave marker for a children's grave labeled "putti" -- from the 1200s!  This dialectical use of the word has been in place for more than 800 years....

Love to you and your potti,

Alexandra