Sant’Eustochia: Church and Monastery of Montevergine in Messina
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.6
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Italy
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Kingdom of Sicily, Spanish
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Monastery
On this page14 sections
History
Sant’Eustochia is the church and monastery of Montevergine in Messina, Italy, a Roman Catholic complex that developed from the fifteenth century onward. The church is dedicated to Saint Mary under the title of the Assumption, while the monastery bears the title of Saint Mary of the Angels. The complex belongs to the Archdiocese of Messina-Lipari-Santa Lucia del Mela and remains associated with the devotion to the Madonna della Lettera.
Foundation under Eustochia Calafato
The complex arose around 1450 through the initiative of Eustochia Calafato, a fifteenth-century Italian nun and religious founder committed to the strict observance of the Poor Clare tradition. She had already professed as a nun at the monastery of Santa Maria di Basicò, but sought a stricter religious life. To establish a new community, she purchased the former Hospital of Santa Maria Accomandata beside the Church of Santa Cita.
Pope Callistus III authorized the hospital’s conversion into a monastery through a papal bull dated 15 April 1458. By November 1460, Eustochia had moved there with another nun. The Montevergine monastery itself was established under Pope Pius II in 1453, and its strict observance of the First Rule of Saint Clare, the rule governing the religious life of Poor Clare nuns, was regarded as a privilege.
Move to the Montevergine site
After the roof and part of the first building collapsed, the nuns moved between May and August 1464 to a house offered by Bartolomeo Ansalone. This new location became the site of the present monastery. The community later incorporated the House of Pope Leo, the Church of Our Lady of Allegranza, and the Church of San Nicolò dei Gentiluomini. Additional adjoining houses were purchased, creating a unified complex known as the Mount of the Virgins, or more precisely the Mount of the Virgin, in honour of the Madonna.
The original Church of Allegranza was dismantled in 1634. The Church of Santa Maria di Montevergine was then built on its site, giving the complex the church that forms its principal surviving architectural expression. The monastery’s enclosed character also continued. An enclosed, or cloistered, monastery is a community whose members live under restrictions on leaving the monastic enclosure. Sant’Eustochia is described as the only enclosed monastery remaining in the Diocese of Messina.
Survival and restoration
The complex stands along the former Via dei Monasteri, an important urban route historically known as the Dromo or Mastra Rua. During the Greek-Byzantine period, this route was regarded as the city’s principal thoroughfare and was lined with monasteries. Sant’Eustochia is described as the only surviving religious institution in the modern city to have come through the earthquakes of 1638 in Calabria, 1693 at Noto, 1783 and 1894 in southern Calabria, and the 1908 Messina earthquake almost intact.
The 1908 earthquake spared much of the church. Restoration followed in 1929, after which the building reopened for worship. The complex also preserves the incorrupt body of Saint Eustochia, maintaining the direct connection between the surviving institution and its founder.
Remains
The church and adjacent monastery occupy the former Via dei Monasteri, now Via XXIV Maggio. The historic Dromo extended approximately north to south from the Boccetta torrent near the Church of Saint Francis of Assisi at the Immaculate Conception to Piazza Fontana Gennaro. The present complex combines the church built after the dismantling of Allegranza in 1634 with the monastic buildings that developed around the community’s successive acquisitions.
Church exterior and interior
Portal and tribune
The church retains a late-sixteenth-century portal attributed to Giovanni Maffei and Niccolò Francesco Maffei. The same attribution is associated with the tribune, an elevated architectural feature linked to the choir or principal interior area of a church.
Nave and marble decoration
The church had a single nave enriched with precious mixed-marble revetments made by the sculptor Vincenzo Tedeschi. Large ceiling frescoes were painted by Letterio Paladino, whose works at the church included paintings of the Immaculate Conception and the Sacra Lettera. The Sacra Lettera is the devotional tradition surrounding a letter attributed to the Virgin Mary and associated with Messina’s religious identity.
Baptismal font and lost Madonna
A marble baptismal font made in the sixteenth century by Rinaldo Bonanno forms part of the church’s artistic furnishings. Another marble work was a Madonna made in 1534 by Giacomo Gagini in collaboration with his father, Antonello. It was probably destroyed during the series of earthquakes that preceded the 1908 Messina earthquake.
Altars, paintings, and treasury
Main altar
The main altar carries a canvas of the Madonna of the Angels, showing the Virgin with Saint Francis of Assisi and Saint Clare. Giovan Battista Quagliata painted it in 1658.
Later paintings
The church contains a nineteenth-century painting by Michele Panebianco depicting Saint Francis Receiving the Stigmata. It also has a painting of Saint Blaise by Gaetano Corsini, dated 1931.
Silver monstrance
The treasury preserves valuable silverwork, including a richly decorated seventeenth-century monstrance made by the Messinese artist Sebastiano Juvarra. A monstrance is a Catholic liturgical vessel used to display the consecrated Eucharistic host.
Relic of Saint Eustochia
The church preserves the incorrupt body of Saint Eustochia. This relic gives the surviving interior a direct physical link to the nun whose religious foundation shaped the history of Montevergine in Messina.
