Church of San Zeno

The pieve church of S. Zeno stands on a rocky prominence, today just outside the town of Lonato. The hilltop on which the church was built is square in shape, levelled at the top and with the remains of a circuit wall at its base (some of these ruins are still visible). Some archaeological finds suggest that the present site was already occupied in Roman times, then reoccupied in the early Middle Ages with the presence of a church dedicated to St. Martin (perhaps a sign of an origin in, or a connection with, the great Carolingian abbey of St. Martin of Tours, which had obtained possessions and revenues on Lake Garda after the defeat of the Lombard peoples: an example is the nearby monastery of S. Salvatore at Sirmione, a foundation of the Lombard period which, with the coming of the Franks, passed among the possessions of the monastery of Tours). For scholars, the present dedication to St. Zeno would reveal a link with Verona and with the powerful monastery of S. Zeno outside the city walls (to this day the territories of the Lower and Middle morainic Garda depend ecclesiastically on the diocese of Verona and administratively on the province of Brescia). The first mention of this Veronese influence on the territory of Lonato is found in a papal document of the year 1145, in which Pope Eugene III recognised to Tabaldo, bishop of Verona, “ plebem de Lonato cum capelli set castello” . Throughout the 12th century, various documents attest the pieve functions of the church of S. Zeno. The first confirmation of the definite existence of Lonato as a settlement, on the other hand, dates from the year 977 (an earlier mention, attributed to a privilege of Berengar of 909, would not seem very credible: note that the wording used in the document is “ in locus ” and not “ vicus ” or “ castrum ”). Particular attention is also deserved by a papal bull of the year 1184, which records a series of properties granted to Ricardo, archpriest of the pieve of S. Zeno, among which appears “loco ipsum in quo prefata plebs sita est cum ipso castro veteri”. This indication, together with the archaeological remains (the remains of wall at the base of the artificial plateau), suggests that the pieve had been built inside, or at least near, a “ vetus ” (old) fortified structure (as regards the practice of fortifying churches or building religious buildings on fortified sites, it should be said that this phenomenon had already spread from the end of the 9th century). S. Zeno lost its status as a pieve church in the 18th century, after the building of the new parish church. The present building has a single nave with a semicircular apse at the east end and a gabled front at the west end, and is roofed with curved tiles. It is just over 26 metres long and about 8 wide. The masonry, mostly of the Romanesque period, is built with good constructional regularity, although some scholars identify at least two building phases that can be dated within the medieval period, proposing a first, smaller building, datable within the 11th century; later, around the middle of the 12th century, the old construction was remodelled, lengthened and raised. At an even more recent date, the room of the present sacristy, with a rectangular plan, was added on the south side wall. The artificial plateau on which the church stands is reached from the east, in the apse area (see photo of apse) . The building structures that make up this section of the pieve complex of S. Zeno reveal the different construction phases that must have marked the building of the edifice. What is especially striking is the care taken in composing the decorations that characterise the apse compared with the side walls and the façade, which retain the sober essentiality typical of the minor Romanesque buildings of this part of the province of Brescia, such as nearby S. Cipriano and S. Emiliano at Padenghe. Into the masonry of roughly hewn pebbles of various materials that forms the end wall of the nave is set the apse semicircle, built of iron-grey sandstone, well worked and smoothed on the visible face, composed of blocks, some of them large, laid in thin layers of mortar (see photo of apse, detail) . The semicircular space is divided into five sections by six slender pilaster strips that rise from a slightly projecting plinth: four of these pilaster strips are crowned by small squared capitals decorated at the corners with small anthropomorphic heads and in the centre with a caulicole motif (the best preserved is the one on the second pilaster strip from the south – see photo of capital ). Linking each pilaster strip are three projecting blind arches, made of monolithic stones with a double incision like a frame tracing the arch (the monoliths are not of equal size and are carved sometimes with two arches, sometimes with two and a half: the last two monoliths towards the south are better preserved, so much so as to raise doubts about their actual originality). Supporting each arch there are, in part, small corbels carved with human heads (as at S. Pancrazio at Montichiari, S. Andrea at Maderno and S. Siro at Cemmo), six from the left to be precise, while the corbels supporting the arches in the north section, five in number, are of plainer workmanship with a simple downward chamfer (see photo of corbels) . The apse semicircle is roofed with curved tiles resting on a cornice of light-coloured stone projecting some twenty centimetres and a few centimetres thick, supported in turn by another cornice, more massive and projecting only slightly from the walls of the apse. Experts date the construction of the apse to the full 12th century (second half). A special feature is represented, besides some recently scratched graffiti giving names or dates, some of them of the 19th century, by a mark on the third pilaster strip from the left at a height of one and a half metres from the ground, formed by a deep vertical groove marked at regular intervals by lighter horizontal incisions, identified by scholars as an ancient unit of linear measurement (an evident area of chiselling towards the bottom makes it impossible to assess fully the actual length of this unit of measurement, perhaps corresponding to the Lonato braccio, see photo of measure ): the presence of this feature indicates the functions, not only religious but also economic and administrative, performed by the pieve in the Middle Ages. The only openings in this part of the building are three splayed single-light windows of equal size, with a monolithic arch at the top, set in the apse semicircle. The dark sandstone is also used, for a short stretch, in the flat end wall of the south side, while on the opposite north side the stones of various materials also used in the corners of the façade reappear. Different again is the masonry of the extension of the south wing, now used as a sacristy, where the features, still relatively homogeneous, of laying in horizontal rows prevail, but composed of smaller blocks mixed with fragments of curved tiles and other brick material, comparable to the section of masonry of the south side wall in the stretch near the façade. Above the room used as a sacristy, towards the south-east, following restoration work in the 16th and 17th centuries, a small bell gable in red brick was built. Along a stretch of the eaves on the north side of the church, set at equal distances from one another in a slightly projecting cornice similar to the one under the eaves of the apse semicircle, are eight small corbels decorated with human heads, each different from the others (see photo of small heads) ; local experts state that some other similar corbels, unfortunately stolen in recent times, were placed at various points in the masonry of this side. continued >>>