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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

OUTSIDE THE CHURCH  |   THE SANCTUARY INSIDE  |  STORY

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. 

St. Francis Xavier. At the bottom right is the portrait of the treasurer Illuminato Giarrizzo who in his will of 1828 asked to be buried in the Oratory (AN, vol. 361-1 p. 188). The fresco (tempera on plaster, 254x136 cm) is walled into the second arch of the right wall.

St. Philip Neri confesses St. Camillus de Lellis; at the bottom left, the portrait of the treasurer Giuseppe Castro. The fresco (tempera on plaster, 252x140 cm, from the first half of the 19th century) is walled in the first arch of the right wall.

In the first arch of the left wall, there is a fresco of the Trinity and St. Joseph, from which beams of light radiate the world; the name of the treasurer portrayed in the panel is unknown. The tempera on plaster measures 249x152 cm and, like the others, is from the first half of the 19th century.

St. John Nepomuk, martyr of the sacramental seal, with the portrait of the treasurer Antonio Coco underneath.
The fresco measures 249x138 cm.

The painting, Jesus and Mary among the symbols of the Passion (oil on canvas, 144 cm x 104), was painted in 1929 by Nunzia­to Pe­tralia from Bronte «under the care of the Treasurer Casella Michelangelo», and recalls the painting on the central altar of the Oratory and that of the altar of Jesus and Mary in the Sanctuary of the Annunziata.

Positioned on the central wall of the apse, above the altar, is the fresco of Jesus and Mary with the symbols of the Passion.

The 19th century work (like, in general, all the others in the Oratory) is a tempera on plaster, measures 140 cm by 110 cm wide and is placed inside a frame in modeled and gilded stucco. It recalls the painting by Nunziato Petralia, very likely to have been painted by the same.

On the right is the fresco of the "Buon Pastore" (Good Shepherd) walled in the third blind arch of the left wall.
At the bottom (on the left) is the portrait of the priest Diego Dimitilli, with the cross of the Knight of Malta on his chest.

A curiosity reported by Benedetto Radice

A curiosity reported by Benedetto Radice: the historian from Bronte writes that in 1700 a school was to be built next to the oratory but that economic difficulties and a clergy "who had become more greedy and less generous" ruined everything.

Here is what our historian writes: «In the first year of the 18th century, the clergy, having ceased dealings with the Piarists (and I have not been able to find out why), turned to the congregation of the fathers of the order of the minor clerics regular and on 21 January 1701, with a deed at the notary Giuseppe Chirone, the archpriest Don Giuseppe Papotto, on behalf of the clergy, ceded to Father Tommaso Schiros  of the minor fathers the church of the Annunziata and its administration to build there, next to the small church of the congregation of Jesus and Mary, a house of education at his own expense with the obligation for the fathers to procure the income necessary to maintain the studies of grammar, philosophy and theology.

The procurators of the church also ceded all the goods owned by it, the annual harvests of must and wheat.

With an act of March 6 of the same year the brothers of the congregation of Jesus and Mary ratified and approved the previous act, and with another of March 12 of the same year the Minorite Fathers had the agreement ratified by Monsignor Ruana, Abbot and Archbishop of Monreale.

The Minorite Fathers were unable to obtain the money for the building and the income for the maintenance of the schools. The clergy, having become more greedy and selfish and less generous towards the country, did not believe in directing the legacies of the priests Bellina and Mancani to the benefit of the Minorites and things remained like this for another half century.

But what the pious priests Mancani and Bellina could not do, what the clergy no longer wanted, was reserved for a poor and humble son of the people». (The historian is of course referring to the Venerable Ignazio Capizzi and the construction of the majestic Real Collegio that bears his name.)

December 2004

In the two images above, the two frescoes measuring 170 cm by 100 (tempera on plaster from the first half of the 19th century) painted on the sides of the altar in the apse: the one on the top left represents the Archangel Michael; the one on the right represents the Guardian Angel. On the Archangel's shield is the writing "Quis ut Deus".
Devotion to St. Michael the Archangel has always been particularly felt by the people of Bronte and a child, dressed in the guise of St. Michael, with a sword and shield bearing the same inscription, opens the solemn procession on Good Friday every year.

Translated by Sam Di Bella

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