The
Church of Michele
Arcangelo & the Sant'Alfonso
Hill
 There
is
some confusion about the terminology regarding
one of the most picturesque churches in the
Bay of Naples. On the slopes of Vesuvius just
above the town of Torre del Greco is a small
hill, visible from the entire bay. Upon that
hill there perches a white church with an
adjacent monastery; the facade of the church
faces southwest and is stunning to behold at
sunset. I have always called the church
Sant'Alfonso because that is what I must have
heard at one time or another. Wrong. The hill is
called Sant'Alfonso. The church is
San Michele
Arcangelo, St. Michael the Archangel.
First, archaeology confirms that the hill was
used by the Romans and, before them, the
Greeks. The oldest documented name for the
hill is Greek—Pandiera, "all sacred." The
earliest Christian name is Monte San'Angelo,
in use by the 5th century. There was for many
centuries at least some sort of small
Christian chapel on the hill. The earliest
references to a house of worship dedicated to
the Archangel Michael is from the 1400s. Also,
in the early 1500s a small hospital was built
to take in those with contagious diseases. In
1577 the Camaldolese religious order moved to
the premises, and in 1602 a church and
hermitage dedicated to Arcangelo Michele were
dedicated. The hill, itself, then became known
as Sant'Angelo
ai Camaldoli, (not to be confused
with the well-known Camaldoli
monastery on the hill in back of Naples,
itself). New buildings were begun in 1714; the
old church was demolished, and the Baroque
church that one sees today was started in
1741. It is in the form of a Latin cross and
has two facades—one facing the sea and the
other facing the monastic quarters.
With the French takeover
of the kingdom of Naples in 1806, religious
orders were suppressed and the Camaldolese
were expelled from the premises.
Interestingly, the town of Torre del Greco had
the opportunity to buy the property at the
time but did not do so; the town fathers
apparently feared excommunication if they
bought property from the anti-clerical minions
of Napoleon. The property was returned to the
Camaldolese in 1826, ten years after the
return of the Bourbons to the throne of
Naples. After the unification of Italy in
1861, the order was again dispossessed and the
premises were put up for sale. There follows a
string of private owners of the ex-monastery,
some with little regard for the history of the
property, as a result of which some works of
art and even parts of the considerable
monastery library dribbled away by hook or by
crook.
In 1943, Maria Ursula von Stohrer, a German
baroness bought the property. WWII was in
progress, of course, and whatever optimistic
illusions Frau
Baronin might have had about the
German army's ability to stay in Italy were
dispelled in a matter of months. Her property
saw a succession of German anti-aircraft
installations and then invading Allied forces.*
The baroness sold the property to the
Redemptorist Order in 1954. The order renamed
the hill after the founder of their order,
Alfonso Maria de’ Liguori (1696-1787). (Also
see this separate item.)
The church of San Michele Arcangelo and
monastic premises were restored to the point
where they could be rededicated in 1959 on
September 29, the feast day of St. Michael.
Further restoration continued into the 1960s.
There were some irate letters to the editor
when the Redemptorists changed the name of the
hill from Sant'Angelo to Sant'Alfonso. The
name game has another wrinkle here: the church
is named for San Michele Arcangelo, yes,
but the name of the attached hermitage
combines the old and new and is called "the
monastery of Sant'Alfonso ai Camaldoli.
In any event, toponomastics
is an old, old game in this area, and if we
got irate every time they changed the name of
a street, square, or even a hill, we wouldn't
have time to worry about things that matter,
such as that volcano right behind the hill.
Geologically, our bucolic knoll started life
as its own little volcano, perhaps what is
called a "parasite cone" of Mt. Vesuvius. That
was in a past so remote as to be totally
irrelevant to the Greeks, who knew Vesuvius as
peaceful. Vesuvius was then so dull to the
Romans that Pliny the Elder didn't even
mention it in his list of volcanoes in Italy.
It then erupted in 69 AD and
killed him. Vesuvius has been active since
then in an on-again off-again fashion. (Also
see Recent Eruptions
of Vesuvius.) Vesuvius had, indeed, been
napping for a few centuries when the
Camaldolesi decided to build on the
Sant'Angelo hill in the late 1500s. Shortly
thereafter, in December of 1631, Vesuvius
roared into its current cycle of eruptions
with a mammoth explosion. The main brunt of
the explosion and subsequent pyroclastic flow,
however, were apparently away from the church
and hill. I have found no documentation of
damage inflicted on the hill by that event or
the half dozen or so lesser eruptions that
followed in the next few decades, as frightful
as those episodes must have been. The
Camaldolese built a new church shortly
thereafter. That must mean that the premises
substantially survived, as they have survived
the other eruptions since that time, indeed,
as late as 1944. The hill survived—no matter
what it's called.
original
note:
*I'm curious about a German woman who
would buy property near Naples in 1943. I
have nothing on her except that she was seen
sporting a rare René Boivin "pagoda"
headdress in 1941, was "renowned for
her great taste and elegance," was a friend
of Coco Chanel, and—perhaps relevant—was
married to Baron Eberhard von Stohrer,
(d.1953) the German ambassador first to
Franco's rebel court in Salamanca during the
Spanish civil way and then to Madrid,
itself, from 1939-1942. She acquired the
property in the same year (1943) that her
diplomat husband was recalled to Berlin and
held onto it until a year after his death.
There's probably a good story behind all
this. Somebody please write me and tell me
what it is!
update:
August 2011
Aaaah,
thank you! Maria Ursula von Stohrer's name
is better known in connection with another
site in the Bay of Naples, the Castiglione
Thermal Baths on the Island of Ischia. In
the 1930s she and her husband visited Naples
and she decided to acquire property. She
decided on the ancient Castiglione site and
bought it in 1936. After the war she
returned to Ischia and dedicated the rest of
her life to developing the property into
a flourishing commercial enterprise.
She passed away in 1988 on Ischia. (^)
to encyclopedia index
to history
portal
|
