Walking the Sacred Mountain

As opposed to Varallo and the other Sacred Mount already built, the Varese one needed a further decisive element: the road. And Giuseppe Bernasconi, expert in the construction of roads, made a handsome wide one, “carved into the rock like a book” which could accommodate the numerous processions climbing the mount

by Giuseppe Frangi

The interior of the sanctuary which, at the end of the route, is chapel XV, that of the Coronation of Mary. Here one sees an altar dedicated to the Adoration of the Magi

At the beginning of the story of the most monumental Sacred Mount in the Alps there was a young girl of fifteen. She was called Caterina Moriggia, and was born in Pallanza, on Lake Maggiore, in 1437. With boldness and surprising determination for the time, she overcome the opposition of her parents, and began to live as a hermit. The place had been suggested to her in a dream. It was a mountain on the other side of the lake, linked to an ancient cult of Mary, which rose above the small village of Varese. Tradition assigns a precise date to the beginning of her venture: 24 April 1452. Two years went by and Caterina found a first companion to share her call. Giuliana Puricelli was ten years older than her and originally from Varese. One could say the little community of the Romites had been founded. A third girl joined them in 1471. Her name was Benedetta Biumi. She was of noble family and it is thanks to her, the biographer of the two founders, that this very humble story has come down to us in such precise detail. When in 1474 Pope Sixtus IV, emitted a Bull from Ostia (still preserved in the State Archive of Milan), granting approval for the small cloistered order following the Augustinian rule, the girls had increased to five, had abandoned the caves and moved to the small convent beside the ancient Sanctuary.
The presence of the small community had in fact revived an ancient memory linked to the story of the mountain: here, according to an undocumented tradition, Ambrose withdrew in prayer on the eve of the decisive confrontation with the Arians and was told by Our Lady that victory was sure. In fact the first trace of a Marian connection is in a document dated 922, also kept in the State Archive of Milan, in which donations made to the “Basilica de Monte de Vellate” are mentioned. Velate is still today the name of a hamlet of Varese on the slopes of the Sacred Mount. And near Velate there is another locality which has another trace of these origins in its name: Sant’Ambrogio Olona.
In short, there was plenty to warrant an ever denser flow of pilgrims coming to climb those very steep slopes. Often there were Capuchin friars among them, who had opened a convent in Casbeno in 1560 and who some time later had been given the duty by the ecclesiastical authority (that is by the archbishop, Carlo Borromeo, because the diocese was and is that of Milan) of administering the Sacraments to the Romites on the mountain.

Here below, chapel III, that of the Nativity; the statues are by Cristoforo Prestinari

In 1570, as shown by documents in the archive of the Sanctuary, there were more than 200 surrounding communities who had taken a vow to climb in procession at least once a year. A tiring ascent, because of the steep slopes completely without streams, 800 meters up the mountain where the monastery and Sanctuary stood. Thus at the beginning of 1600, the abbess, a Spaniard, Maria Teresa de Cid, a cousin of the then governor of Milan, asked to be allowed to build a resting place for the pilgrims half way up the climb. Difficult to know what would have happened to that request if in the meanwhile another fundamental personage hadn’t appeared on the scene. He was Giambattista Aguggiari, a Capuchin friar, born in Monza, and appointed in 1602 guardian of the convent of Melzo a role which he had covered in several Swiss convents. Aguggiari had become seriously ill and at the provincial chapter of 7 May 1604 had asked to be relieved of his post and sent to a quieter place. He certainly could not have imagined what kind of adventure awaited him: transferred to Casbeno he was given the job of preacher to the Romites on the Sacred Mount. It was Sister Maria Teresa de Cid herself who had asked for such a person, in a most moving letter written to the mother of the then archbishop of Milan Federico Borromeo, so that she might intercede in that regard (this letter, dated 19 July 1600, is also in the archives, conserved among the Borromeo papers at Isola Bella). At the end of May 1604 Aguggiari gave his first sermon in the convent and was told immediately about the idea of constructing a way-station on the climb up the mountain. He had, as well, a vow to fulfill: if he survived the illness, he had promised to undertake some task in honor of Mary.
At this point in the story one has to open a parenthesis: for some decades beforehand the Franciscans had been dotting the foothills of the Alps in Lombardy/Piedmont with a previously unseen type of religious monuments. These were the Sacred Mounts, sites where the Christian story could be displayed with great realism and have strong impact on the faithful. Father Bernardino Caimi had started in 1400, creating the most beautiful and famous of the Sacred Mounts, that of Varallo. He had been guardian of the Holy Places in Jerusalem and, once back in Italy, had decided to create these constructions for the benefit of pilgrims who could no longer undertake the journey to the Holy City. After Caimi came another two Franciscans with similar ideas, at the end of the following century: Father Cleto, who created the one in Orta in 1589, and Father Costantino Massimo, in 1590, that in Crea.
In short, Father Aguggiari had examples before him. But the task was very onerous and there were no funds available at the time. However he didn’t keep the idea to himself. He spoke about it to the deputy who looked after the material interests of the Romites, don Giuseppe Dralli, and with Giuseppe Bernasconi, an architect and land surveyor very active in the area.

Chapel X, that of the Crucifixion; the statues are by Dionigi Bussola

Don Vincenzo Gigli, parish priest of Malnate, also learned about the project and invited Father Aguggiari to preach and make a collection in his church. It was the feastday of the patron Saint Martin, 11 November 1604. Three days later, Sunday 14, the representatives of the community of Malnate went in procession up the Mount taking their offerings. The collection was greater than anyone had foreseen and Father Aguggiari was inundated with requests to preach in all the churches around. He never refused, he got to the point of giving four sermons in a day in different places, the last delivered by torch light.
Thus in truly record time, on 25 March 1605, the first stone of the first chapel was laid, dedicated not by chance to the Annunciation. In the heads of Father Aguggiari and the architect Bernasconi, in fact, the project had become much more ambitious than originally asked for by the abbess of the Romites. The idea was to build 14 chapels along the slope up to the Mount devoted to the mysteries of the Rosary. The fifteenth was the Sanctuary itself, the point of arrival at the top of the Mount. The devotion to the Rosary was strongly encouraged in a pastoral letter written in 1584 by Saint Charles, shortly before dying. And though it was particular to the Dominicans (in those very years Caravaggio had painted the masterpiece, now in Vienna, with Our Lady handing the Rosary to Saint Dominic), this time it was in fact done by a Franciscan, Father Aguggiari.
The chapels, like those of Varallo, were to have statues and paintings to represent theatrically and effectively each of the mysteries in turn. An undertaking that in the end cost an enormous expenditure of financial resources.
As opposed to Varallo and the other Sacred Mount already built, the Varese one needed a further decisive element: the road. And Giuseppe Bernasconi, called the “left-hander”, expert at building roads, made a very handsome wide one, “carved like a book into the rock” (as a fascinated English traveler wrote at the beginning of the twentieth century), which could accommodate the many processions climbing the mount and which widened out at every chapel to facilitate the halts. So there were those who wanted to change the name of Varese to the Sacred Way rather than the Sacred Mountain.
Despite the expanded project the works went quickly ahead. In 1608 the approval of Cardinal Federico who, with a pragmatism typical of his family, was concerned that things be done with order and proper accountancy and instituted the congregation of the Fabbriceri “to superintend the building” and especially to “manage the alms”. Tensions had already arisen, in fact, between Aguggiari and the deputies of the Monastery because they wanted to invest part of the large sums gathered with bankers in Varese, while he demanded that all should be spent, there and then, on the rapid advancement of the enterprise. And since Federico insisted that construction should go forward “in galliard fashion”, he must have taken his part.
In 1610 Papal approval arrived, with a Brief dated 30 September. And on 17 October 1619, when the cardinal took the road up the mount, some ten chapels were already almost completed, at least as architectural structures. Federico once again exhorted the builders (“monemus denique, et hortamur dictos fabriceros…”) that they love the work and make it proceed with all their strength, without careless tarrying. When Father Aguggiari and Cardinal Federico died within a few months of each other in 1631, the Sacred Mount was all but finished.

One of the arches which divide, along the route, the joyful, sorrowful and glorious mysteri es

The Sacred Way of many Lombard artists

One can easily get to the bottom or top of the Sacred Mount of Varese. There is also a cable-car from Vellone. Going up on foot from chapel to chapel one covers 2 kilometers and climbs 300 metres. The landscape is impressive as are the works of art along the way. In fact a good many of the chapels were worked on by some of the most important names in seventeenth-century Lombard art, both painters and sculptors. In particular Pier Francesco Mazzucchelli, a Varese painter, Carlo Francesco Nuvolone, Dionigi Bussola, Francesco Silva. Outside the third chapel, Renato Guttuso (who had his studio in Velate, at the foot of the mountain), left a beautiful Flight into Egypt, produced in 1983. The itinerary concludes in the Sanctuary, where the statue of the Crowned Madonna is kept. And where lie the bodies of the Blesseds Caterina Moriggia and Giuliana Puricelli, the foundresses of the order of the Romites, whose convent flanks the Sanctuary.