The OfficeNow business center has decided to introduce you to ed appreciate all the wonders of our area.
After the first two articles thanks to which we appreciated Castelseprio and Castiglione Olona, today we want to take you to Varese and precisely to the Sacro Monte di Varese.
The sacred mountains in the Varesotto area, or more widely, of Insubria had their greatest diffusion in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In this period there was a rift between the Catholic Church and the Church Protestant through its Reformation.
Their aim was to relaunch the Catholic Church, using a series of sacred paths or fortresses.
But this is not the only reason that justifies the creation of all these sanctuaries in northern Italy.
The two main and deepest reasons are, first of all, that to make the arduous, if not impossible, pilgrimage available to the faithful a Jerusalem and its Holy Mountains, albeit in miniature.
The second is that of devotion. An example among all is the Sacro Monte of Varese itself. With its 14 chapels it allows the pilgrim to retrace the stages of the Rosary.
On the mountain above Varese, legend has it, Saint Ambrose defeated, in the 4th century AD, the last heretical and reformist followers and donated to the small oratory under construction, an altar and a wooden statue depicting the Madonna Black.
But how was the monastery formed and how did the idea of the chapels arise? In 1452 Caterina Moriggi da Pallanza retired to the very top of the Sacro Monte of Varese. Within a short time, she was joined by other sisters who they contributed to the foundation of the monastery which is still active.
In the early seventeenth century, one of these nuns, Tecla Maria Cid, had the idea of building a rest chapel towards the halfway point, in so that the faithful could pause and catch their breath before reaching the Sanctuary.
The Capuchin friar Giovan Battista Aguggiari learned about it of this project and, enthusiastic, decided to transform it into something more ambitious. To do this he began a fundraising campaign to create a true devout path that reproduced the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary. In this way he thought he was giving a strong and tangible answer to the Counter-Reformation that spread throughout Europe.
The entire population, from small artisans to great lords of the area, contributed to the construction of this work. Whoever could offered the their work, others offered what they could. The legend It is said that a girl donated the new shoes that she had purchased with many sacrifices.
Don't miss the next episodes in which OfficeNow business center will help you discover step by step all the chapels and the religious route of the Sacro Monte of Varese.