Madonna Annunziata Sanctuary

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OUTSIDE THE CHURCH |  THE SANCTUARY INSIDE  | THE ORATORY OF JESUS AND MARY

Madonna Annunziata Sanctuary

The Jesus and Mary’s oratory

Jesus and Mary’s oratory built adjacent to the church’s left prospect, and annexed to it, is still today the homonymous Confra­ternity seat, founded in the XVI century, and once one of the most important and best organized.

The oratory exterior is not very significant as it is dominated by the Sanctuary's majestic prospect to which gets confused and integrated.

It is enough to go through the small door to find yourself in a delicious spot: a little church simple and linear, rich of documentations and works of art, demonstration of the deep religious feelings that once animate the confraternities life.

Particularly interesting the frescos covering the walls that B. Radice stran­gely defines “grossolani” (coarse).

Nearly all of them are work of local artists and portray figures of saints. In a corner below are portrayed the features of some confraternity’s treasures that ordered the paintings at their own expense. Hardly known and protected they are irremediably disappearing and need some protection and an urgent restoration.

On the internal part of the door can be read: "Aedicula sumptibus sodalium Jesu et Mariae excitata, anno Dom. 1792, ut in tabulis D. Cesarii Cannata, die 25 Januari 1801".

Above is the year of the little church decoration. In 1880 in the Oratory lived the PP.Minoriti.

Here on we shall document some of the little church’s frescos.
 

Bronte, Oratorio di Gesù e Maria, interno

San Francesco Saverio and (below to the right) the treasurer Illuminato Giarrizzo’s portrai

 

San Filippo Neri confessing San Camillo; and further down the treasurer Giuseppe Gatto’s portrait

San Giuseppe, from whom two streaks of light radiate the world, and San Giovanni Nepomuceno, martyr of the sacramental seal, and below the treasurer Antonio Coco’s portrait. The state of the frescos is at its worst. If we don’t want to completely cancel these precious testimonies some urgent restoration work is necessary.


A curiosity reported by Benedetto Radice

Statua di San GiuseppeThe Bronte’s historian writes that in 1700 next to the Oratory had to be erected a scholastic institute but, due to economic difficulties, and to the fact that the clergy had become more greedy and less generous, the all thing was called off.

Here is what B. Radice wrote: «In the first year of the XVIII century the clergy, having decayed the files with the Scooper, (and I never came to know why), turned to the fathers of the order of minor, regular clergymen’s congre­gation and, on the 21st of January 1701, with an act pre­pa­red by the notary Giuseppe Chirone, the archpriest don Giuseppe Papotto, in the name of the clergy, handed over to father Tommaso Schiros, of the minor fathers, the church of the Annunciate and its administration to build adjacent to the Jesus and Mary congregation’s little church, an education school, at his expense on condition of getting the necessary income to maintain studies of grammar, philosophy and theology.

In the apse, at the altar’s sides: at left there is por­trayed the archangel Michael, at right the Guardian Angel. The devotion to S. Michele Ar­can­gelo has al­ways been felt strongly in Bron­te, on the high altar there is the picture of Jesus and Mary.

The Good Shepherd with the father Diego Dimitilli’s portray showing the Cross of Malta’s knight (below at left)





Madonna Annunziata Sanctuary

OUTSIDE THE CHURCH  |  THE SANCTUARY INSIDE

Story

The church’s representatives gave also all the property including annual harvest of must and wheat.

With the act of the 6th of March of the same year the brothers of the Jesus and Mary’s confraternity approved and ratified the preceding act and with another one f the 12th of March of the same year the “minor” fathers got the convention ratified by the Mons Ruana, Abbot and archbishop of Monreale.

The minor fathers were not able to raise the money for the edifice and the income to maintain the schools. The clergy, become more greedy and selfish and less generous towards the country town, did not agree to turn to the minor fathers the income of the fathers Bellina and Mancani and everything remained as before for another half a century.

But what could not be done by the priests Bellina and Mancani, what the clergy did not want to do, was realized by a poor and humble son of the people» (the historian refers naturally to father Ignazio Capizzi).


Translated by Sam Di Bella

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