Cathedral of St. Just: Susa’s Former Benedictine Abbey Church
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.6
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- Country
- Italy
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Holy Roman Empire
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Cathedral
On this page17 sections
History
The Cathedral of St. Just is the principal Catholic church of Susa, Italy, and was founded as a Benedictine abbey church in 1027 or 1029. Dedicated to St. Just of Novalesa, it stands beside the fourth-century Roman walls and the eastern gate of the town, on the site of an earlier Early Christian church. The building became the cathedral of the Diocese of Susa in 1772, after serving for centuries as the church of a Benedictine monastery.
Foundation and Benedictine beginnings
Olderico Manfredi II, marquis of Turin and Susa, established the abbey with his wife Berta and his brother Alrico, bishop of Asti. Monks moved into the complex in 1028, and the first building group was completed in 1035. The foundation placed a Benedictine monastery, belonging to the Order of Saint Benedict, directly within the historic fabric of Susa and beside its Roman defenses.
Medieval enlargement
The church was enlarged during the medieval period through two principal campaigns. In the twelfth century, the facade was extended forward until it reached the Roman walls. Between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the three apses and the sacristy were rebuilt, changing important parts of the earlier church.
Further medieval work is associated with Guillaume d’Estouteville, a fifteenth-century French cardinal. His coat of arms survives on the church exterior, while the campanile received a spire and pinnacles commissioned during his period of patronage.
From abbey church to cathedral
Baroque decoration was added during restorations in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Seven side chapels were also opened during these centuries. After the adjacent Benedictine monastery ceased functioning, the church became a collegiate church in 1749. When Susa was made a bishopric in 1772, the former abbey church was elevated to cathedral status.
Nineteenth-century restoration removed most of the Baroque additions and gave the interior its present Neo-Romanesque character. The cathedral has been a national monument since 1940. Excavation beneath the choir during the winter of 2021–2022 revealed a crypt probably dating from the foundation period. Preliminary results were presented on 6 May 2022 by Luisa Papotti, superintendent for the Metropolitan City of Turin, in the presence of Bishop Cesare Nosiglia. The discovery was regarded as one of the most important archaeological finds in Piedmont during the preceding fifty years.
Remains
Exterior and medieval fabric
Facade
The cathedral stands in Susa’s historic center, beside Porta Savoia, a fourth-century Roman gate with two circular towers, and next to the surviving Roman defensive walls. Its exterior is Romanesque. The west facade is white-coated and gabled, with a plain lower section containing a simple portal beneath a sickle-shaped arch. Four plain pilasters divide the upper section into three fields. A large central single-light arched window is set between two blind arched openings, while a red-brick cornice and three pinnacles crown the composition.
Campanile
The campanile rises 51 metres and retains an eleventh-century core. Its fifteenth-century spire and pinnacles were commissioned by Cardinal Guillaume d’Estouteville, and its base was strengthened in the eighteenth century. Each face is arranged in six levels of openings. The lower three levels have single openings, followed successively by paired, triple, and quadruple openings.
Exterior frescoes
Several frescoes survive on the right side of the church. A Crucifixion of Jesus occupies the lunette of a side portal that was later blocked and dates from about 1125–1130. Nearby, two angels support the coat of arms of Guillaume d’Estouteville, painted between 1457 and 1483. Around the baptistery entrance is a representation of Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem, while saints appear beneath the arch of a blocked pointed arch to the left.
Interior and liturgical spaces
Church layout
The interior has a Neo-Romanesque appearance and follows a Latin-cross plan, consisting of a long nave crossed by a shorter transept. It has three aisles, a projecting transept, and a deep apse, the curved termination of the church. Each aisle contains five bays covered by groin vaults. Two rows of round arches on piers separate the aisles.
Chapels and presbytery
Seven side chapels opened between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with two along the right aisle and five along the left. The first chapel on the right, built by the Lauteri family, contains an eighteenth-century painting of St. Lucy. The second preserves a fragment of a fresco showing the Transport of the Holy House. From the entrance, the left-hand chapels are dedicated to Our Lady of Mount Carmel, St. John Bosco, the Holy Family, Our Lady of the Rosary, and St. Joseph. The right transept altar is dedicated to relics, while the left altar is dedicated to the Blessed Sacrament.
The apse is occupied by the presbytery, the area reserved for the altar and clergy, which is raised six steps above the rest of the church. It contains a Baroque high altar made of polychrome marble and a valuable wooden choir dating from the fourteenth century and altered in the nineteenth century. A statue traditionally identified as Marchioness Adelaide is more probably a representation of a penitent Mary Magdalene. Its association is with Adelaide, an early member of the Savoy dynasty and wife of Otto I of Savoy.
Baptistery
The baptistery occupies a space to the right of the apse that was formerly a relic chapel. Its medieval baptismal font probably came from the deconsecrated and very ancient baptistery church of Santa Maria Maggiore in Susa. The basin is carved from one block of green oficalcite, an ornamental stone composed mainly of calcite with serpentine minerals, from Cesana Torinese. It has a four-lobed cup shape and rests on a base of local grey schist. The font bears the names of its sculptor, Guigo, and its commissioner, Pietro II, provost of San Lorenzo di Oulx during the second quarter of the twelfth century.
Sacristy altar
The sacristy contains a twelfth-century altar of Lunense marble signed by Pietro da Lione, who worked in the valley. He is considered a probable co-author, with Niccolò, of the Zodiac Portal at Sacra di San Michele. The altar may also have been transferred from the nearby baptistery church of Santa Maria Maggiore.
Crypt and organ
Foundation-period crypt
The crypt discovered beneath the choir lies four metres below the level of the high altar. Its chamber contained architectural and artistic debris of considerable interest, providing material connected with the cathedral’s foundation period around 1027–1029.
Pipe organ
The pipe organ occupies the choir loft at the rear of the church. Carlo Vegezzi Bossi built it in 1890, and Francesco Vegezzi Bossi restored and enlarged it in 1934. A painted wooden case in Baroque style encloses the instrument. Its principal pipes are displayed in three pointed sections, while the console faces the nave and has two 58-note keyboards, a straight 27-note pedalboard, and entirely tubular-pneumatic action.
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