The church San Martino in Calonico
(Only for admirers of Calonico !)
The origin of the church of San Martino di Calonico has been lost in the maze of time! A legend reported by Alina Borioli (1887-1965), in "La vecchia Leventina", first published in 1926, may not help to bring its history to light, but at least to bring a smile on our faces:
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The people of Calonico wanted to build a church and dedicate it to Saint Martin and had therefore prepared a lot of material on a piece of land they had agreed upon in the middle of the village. But one fine morning they found their material mysteriously transported to the west of the village to a hillock overlooking the entire middle valley. To their amazement and with no less effort, the people of Calonico set about returning the material to its former location, as they considered that the hillock was too easy to collapse. One morning they found the stones on the hill again. They realised that it was St Martin himself who had miraculously transported them. They concluded that their patron did not fear landslides and wanted his church to be built there to protect the village. The church was built on the hillock and, together with Altanca and Catto, is one of the most picturesque in the Leventina Valley.
But let's take a brief step back into known history before talking about the Church of San Martino di Calonico.
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In 196 B.C. the Romans occupied Ticino as far as the "Campi canini" (an area corresponding to the Riviera valley) and from 15 B.C. onwards the whole of Ticino can be considered Roman (See also "History and Archaeology", the findings on parcel 378 at Calonico - Castello). The Western Roman Empire fell in 476 A.D. when Odoacer took power as representative of the Eastern Roman Empire. Odoacer was followed in Lombardy by the Ostrogoths in 493 AD, Byzantium in 553 AD, the Lombards in 568 AD and the Franks in 774 AD until 887 AD. The period that followed is known as "feudal anarchy", expressing a phase of disintegration of central power when different sovereigns followed one another until the advent of municipal autonomy in the early 1000s.
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It is during this period of alternating sovereigns that Leventina is mentioned for the first time in official documents, more precisely in the will of Attone di Vercelli of 948 A.D., who seems to have received his property from a royal donation to his ancestors of Lombard lineage. He donated the three valleys of Leventina, Blenio and Riviera to the Chapter of Milan, which was the college of canons responsible for the liturgical functions of the Milan Cathedral. From this moment on, with a few brief interruptions in the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries when the Leventina was dominated by the Germanic emperors of the Holy Roman Empire, the chapter controlled the civil and ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the valley uninterruptedly until 1403. The 15th century was characterised by alternating phases of temporal rule by Uri or the Chapter of Milan until the Battle of Giornico in 1478, which sanctioned Uri's rule (see "History and Archaeology"). From 1400 onwards, the temporal powers of the chapter were increasingly reduced until 1550, when the only power left to them was that of collation of the parish benefices (i.e. the right to confer the benefice to a parish priest). The spiritual power was passed onto the Archbishop of Milan and the temporal power to Uri.
Calonico is first mentioned in 1227 as "Callonego" in the deed of partition of the Leventina Alps and the bones dated with the C14 in the Castello area of Calonico also date from this period (10th-13th century, see "History and Archaeology"). The first reference to the Church of San Martino is in the "Liber notitiae sanctorum mediolani" (" In loco canonico, ecclesia sancti Martini "), which contains a list of the churches and altars of the Milanese diocese and was written by Goffredo da Bussero towards the end of 1200.
The first mention of the church of San Martino in a parchment of the degagna di Calonico is dated 21st December 1316, which lists the cereal rents due to the 'calonica dei poveri' of the church of San Martino. The "poor man's vicarage" was a form of assistance centred on the local church, which donated part of its income to assist the poor.
St Martin's Church is mentioned again in 1356, 1478 and 1541, when the church was reconciled, i.e. put in the grace of God and returned to use as a church, and again in more recent times between 1942 and 1951. In 1541, the patrician document states:
"Giovanni Antonio Melegnano Bishop of Lodi ..... reconciles the Church, the altars and the cemetery of San Martino di Calonico at the request and petition of all the neighbours of Calonico. He also grants an indulgence of 40 days to those who visit the aforementioned church on the day of the reconciliation or of the dedication....".
The practice of indulgences is based on the existence of an ecclesiastical treasure where graces are accumulated by virtue of the merits acquired by Christ and the saints. The church has the possibility of bestowing graces on its members by granting indulgences, i.e. remission of part or all of the punishment to be expiated in earthly life or in purgatory.
In the documents of the archives of the Patrizi of Calonico between 1483 and 1487, a dispute between the parish priest of the Church of Chiggiogna and Calonico about the administration of the pastoral care at the Church of San Martino is reported. Chiggiogna at that time was the seat of the parish that extended over the same territory as the neighbourhood of Chiggiogna and therefore included the chapels of Molare, Rossura and Calonico (See " History and Archaeology"). The priests aggregated to the parish of Chiggiogna were therefore also in charge of the celebrations also in the chapels of the three villages, alternating in their tasks and in some cases even residing there. See the map with the relationships of dependencies between villages with parishes and villages with chapels (No 6 - Chiggiogna, Rossura, Molare, Calonico).
In the dispute of 1483, Calonico brought a case against one of the parish priests of Chiggiogna (Prete Ambrogio) for not officiating in the Church of San Martino, and witnesses were heard. One of them, the priest Pietro da Chironico, confirmed that 40 years earlier, when he was parish priest of Chiggiogna, he had been instructed to say mass once a week and once every three Sundays and to administer baptism and other sacraments, according to an ancient custom. The dispute was judged by the tribunal of the Quindici of Uri in favour of Calonico, who ordered priest Ambrogio to say mass in Calonico and the people of Calonica to pay the annuities to priest Ambrogio, including those due. In 1486 there was also another dispute of a similar nature to the previous one between Chiggiogna and Calonico/Molare/Rossura, who refused to pay for the rebuilding of the church of S. Maria di Chiggiogna, since they had to provide for the maintenance of their own churches.
The church of San Martino then became a separate parish in 1594 under Archbishop Gasparre Visconti, who succeeded San Carlo Borromeo.
More information on the church of San Martino can be obtained from the pastoral visits starting in the second half of the 16th century and initiated by St Charles Borromeo, archbishop of Milan (see also "The Borromeos at Calonico"). On the basis of the accounts of the pastoral visits and 'Ordinationes' (= decrees/orders issued after the visit) it has been possible to trace back approximately the different phases of construction of the church of San Martino. The only datable element from 1200 is the bell tower, detached from the rest of the church. The original church was altered several times from 1600 onwards as a result of the activities following the pastoral visits. Below is an attempt to read the reports of pastoral visits and decrees
Reports of Pastoral Visitations and Orders ("Decreti"):
In 1880, the inscriptions on the two bells of the bell tower were read, one bearing the date 1566 and the other 1626. In 1908, one of the two bells was sent for recasting. The improvement activities of the church continued in modern times with more or less significant interventions (see below):
“Regionale” (Regional TV news – Ticino) of 12.07.1983, roof renovation
And this brings us back to the "hillock dominating the entire middle valley" mentioned by Alina Borioli in her legend. On 23rd September 1969, four mountaineers from the Club Alpino Italiano (CAI) of Locarno climbed for the first time the rock face dominated by the Church of San Martino.
“Regionale” (Regional TV news – Ticino) of 23.09.1969
Filmed: Paoli De Angelis, Lorenzina de Angelis, Piero Settembrini, Mima De Angelis
From : 1) Materiali e Documenti Ticinesi (MDT) 2) Registro delle documentazioni, Archivio Patriziato di Calonico (Rascher) 3) Heilige des Tessin, Ernst Schmid 1951, 4) Monumenti storici e documenti d’archivio, Marina Bernasconi Reusser, 5) Atti di San Carlo, P. D’Alessandri, 6) Archivio Ufficio dei beni culturali, Bellinzona, 7) Il governo delle anime, P. Ostinelli, 1998. 8) Liber notitiae sanctorum mediolani, Goffredo da Bussero, fine 1200, 9) Le tre valli svizzere Federico Borromeo, Braghetta, 1977, 10) BSSI, 1880, No 7.