The Church of San Bernardino da Siena is a Catholic place of worship in the Italian municipality of Amantea, in the province of Cosenza in Calabria. It is situated above sea level on the street of the same name in the Tyrrhenian town.

The church, dating back to the first half of the 15th century and declared a national monument, is flanked by another smaller place of worship once home to the archconfraternity of the Immaculate Conception, the Oratory of the Nobles, and the convent of the Friars Minor, founded in 1436 and occupied again by the friars since 1995, after their last departure from the building in 1861.San Bernardino has also been described as "the most significant example of the architectural poetics spread by the mendicant orders in the 15th century in Calabria" (Tedesco, p. 31), and as the "civic temple" of Amantea (Fera, p. 39), a point of reference for the entire town community, not only for Christians.

History

The foundation: 15th and 16th centuries

The foundation of the Amantean convent of Observant Friars Minor in the Rota district was authorized by Pope Eugene IV with the Papal brief given in Bologna on September 24, 1436: the pope probably took an interest in the matter, which was of a merely local character, due to the intervention of his private steward, the Amantean nobleman Giovanni Cozza. The minor observants had already settled in other localities in Calabria, where the order had been brought by Blessed Tommaso Bellacci from Florence: in Tropea and Cosenza in 1421, in Mesoraca in 1428, in Reggio Calabria in 1431, and in Cinquefrondi in 1436.

In all these cases, observant minors had occupied places of worship abandoned by other religious orders: this was probably also the case in Amantea. In fact, the Papal Brief signed by Eugene IV mentions, as noted by the scholar Francesco Samà,Francesco Samà, San Bernardino di Amantea: un colosso dell'architettura monastica francescana, "Calabria Letteraria", anno XLIV nn. 1-2-3, gennaio-febbraio-marzo 1996, p. 62. a "licentia acceptandi" ("permission to accept") the convent, that is, a convent probably already existed and did not need to be built, since the University and the citizens of Amantea had offered those abandoned locations to the Observants. In addition, the old church bell, currently preserved in the cloister of the convent, bears an inscription that dates the first casting of it to 1404. Finally, scholar Alessandro Tedesco has identified in a notarial deed concerning the making of the marble diptych for the oratory of the Nobles, dated 1491, evidence that about sixty years after the settlement of the Observants in the convent and the consequent dedication of the church to St. Bernardine of Siena, the population continued to call the church by its ancient name of "monasterium Sancti Francisci de Amantea." From all this, it is inferred that the first occupants of the convent had been some minor conventual friars who had abandoned the Franciscan monastery located in the Catocastro district at the foot of Amantea's castle near the church of St. Francis of Assisi, now in ruins.Vincenzo Segreti, La chiesa monumentale di San Bernardino da Siena di Amantea, "Calabria Letteraria", anno XXIV nn. 10-11-12, ottobre-novembre-dicembre 1976, p. 21.

In the 15th century the convent was visited by some distinguished individuals: Saint Francis of Paola, the Observant Minor from Cosenza Father Antonio Scozzetta, who died in Amantea in the odour of sanctity, the vicar general of the Observant Minors Pietro of Naples and the Duke of Calabria Alfonso II of Naples all stayed there.

In 1581, the archconfraternity of the Immaculate Conception was founded, a confraternity reserved only for the city's nobles: the lower classes and sailors, on the other hand, gathered in the confraternity of the Most Holy Rosary. The archconfraternity of the Immaculate Conception chose the church of San Bernardino as its headquarters, and beginning in 1592, it began construction of the Oratory of the Nobles. This oratory was built on the site of the chapel of jus patronatus of the Cavallo family, which had recently become related to another noble Amantean family, the Baldacchini, through the marriage of Giacomo Cavallo and Prudenza Baldacchini: it was these spouses who commissioned, in 1608, their own tomb to be placed in the oratory from the Messina sculptor Pietro Barbalonga. Barbalonga was recalled to the Oratory of the Nobles in 1619, when the first rector of the archconfraternity, the Amantean nobleman Fabrizio Mirabelli, commissioned him to design the family tomb.

17th and 18th centuries: earthquakes and restoration works

The 1638 earthquake severely damaged the church, resulting in the collapse of the bell tower, which was later rebuilt several times and damaged by other earthquakes. After the plague of 1656, the Archconfraternity of the Immaculate Conception undertook new work in the oratory of the Nobles, and the minor observants began to sell space for individual burials or family pits under the floor of the church, for the obvious purpose of "making cash" for the maintenance of the convent. Other figures who were buried in the church included the governor of Amantea Giacinto Santucci († 1664), castellans Antonio Spiriti († 1769), Pasquale Gabriele († 1787), Giuseppe Poerio († 1801), soldier Casimiro Belluomo († 1785), physician Ignazio de Fazio and his heirs and successors (upon payment of an annual fee of 10 carlins as established in 1672), priest Giovanni Battista Posa (upon payment of 8 ducats as established in 1676), the noble Amantean bishop of Termoli Antonio Mirabelli († 1688).

The 1783 earthquake severely damaged the church by collapsing the bell tower, rebuilt after the previous earthquake in 1638, and part of the entrance porch.

During the 1806-1807 siege of Amantea by the French army commanded by Generals Guillaume Philibert Duhesme, Jean Reynier and Jean Antoine Verdier, the besiegers encamped near San Bernardino, located outside the city walls, bombarding from this square the castle of Amantea, which capitulated only on February 7, 1807, after two months of siege.

The convent, sacked by French soldiers and emptied of its friars, was officially closed on August 7, 1809, after the approval of the laws subverting ecclesiastical property in the Kingdom of Naples. Ownership of the property passed to the state property, which leased the church and the convent to the Amantean nobleman Giulio Sacchi on September 5, 1812, upon payment of the annual rent of 42.97 ducats (but the estimated value of the complex amounted to nearly 5,000 ducats). Sacchi eventually turned the convent into his own palace, although soon, after the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte, the Congress of Vienna, the shooting of Joachim Murat at Pizzo Calabro on October 13, 1815, and the return of Ferdinand II of the Two Sicilies to Naples, the Friars Minor Observant returned to possession of the convent, but only to cede ownership of the building and church to the diocese of Tropea, which called the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, commonly called the "Redemptorists", to occupy it: they occupied the convent on February 11, 1833.

Abandonment and restoration: from the 1800s to the 2000s

The "Redemptorists" were not well accepted by the population of Amantea, in part because they were not in a condition to permanently inhabit the convent, and also because the building was by then in the process of collapsing: in 1843 a dispute began between the religious and the Decurionate of Amantea regarding a torrential watercourse that, due to the administration's failure to comply, had encroached on the lands of the religious. Thus, as early as 1842 the Archconfraternity of the Immaculate Conception expressed the desire to purchase the convent in order to assign it once again as the residence of the Observant Friars Minor, a desire put into action only in 1847: after all, the "Redemptorists" themselves already agreed in 1845 that it was better to reopen the convent of the Observant Friars Minor, given their inability to garrison the convent and the damage that the Amantean Christian community was receiving.

By 1851–1852 some much-needed restoration work had been carried out by the archconfraternity on the church, at a total cost of 1,366 ducats, and in 1854 some of the convent premises were rented to private families, while much of the building remained under restoration. In the 19th century an auditorium was also built above the left aisle, for use as a meeting hall and concert venue. Ferdinand II of the Two Sicilies authorized the reopening of the convent of the Friars Minor Observant on August 10, 1855, and on November 7 of that same year the notarial deed was signed providing that the archconfraternity of the Immaculate Conception would pay 25 ducats for the rent of the convent and church to the "Redemptorists" and that the Observants would pay the same amount to the archconfraternity.

The convent was permanently closed after the Unification of Italy as a result of the royal decree-law subverting ecclesiastical property issued on February 12, 1861. Even though in 1862 the prefect of Cosenza had authorized the friars to return to San Bernardino, they did not accept the invitation, probably due to a shortage of individuals, as had also happened in other convents in the province. The building returned to state property, and was damaged by the 1905 earthquake, which had its epicenter near Mount Poro in what is now the province of Vibo Valentia and during which the highest instrumental magnitude value ever recorded in Italy was registered: at San Bernardino, the damage was limited to the collapse of the top of the bell tower and the roof of the first span of the church.

The current appearance of the church is largely due to the interventions directed by Gilberto Martelli in 1953, which provided for the restoration of the ancient and essential Gothic architecture at the expense of the Baroque marble altars placed in the side chapels, and on the outside the rearrangement of the entrance porch.

These interventions were consolidated and renewed by the last restorations undergone by the church in the early 1990s, with the repaving of the entire complex in square terracotta tiles and the construction of the electrical and lighting systems. In fact, in 1995 the Observant Friars Minor returned to Amantea, after more than a century of absence.

While the church, dependent on the parish of the collegiate church of San Biagio, was always officiated, despite the poor condition of the bell tower and the copious water infiltration in the south wall, the convent was used for different purposes: first the seat of some municipal offices, the municipal archives and a secondary school, then a mental health center and later the headquarters of the local health authority, only after the aforementioned work in the early 1990s was it restored and used for its original purpose.

Description

The church

The entrance porch