Church of Sant'Emiliano

The Pieve di Sant'Emiliano at Padenghe stands outside the present-day village, on a small morainic “promontory” not far from the massive bulk of the castle, on the road towards Lonato (see exterior photo). Like San Cipriano at Lonato, this church too is a small Romanesque religious building, built of stone and datable to the 11th–12th century. The first documentary mention is contained in a bull of Pope Eugene III of the year 1145, according to which the church of Sant'Emiliano was dependent on the Bishop of Verona (St. Emilian, to whom this church is dedicated, lived in a region that is now part of Romania and was martyred in the 4th century). The building has a rectangular plan with a semicircular apse to the east, a gabled façade to the west and a single nave. Against the south side now stand more recent structures used for agricultural purposes. A massive round-arched brick gateway, placed on the westward extension of the south wall, gives access to this private area. In the 16th century, according to scholars, the interior of the church was radically restored, and on that occasion, besides a probable rebuilding of the roofs and of some stretches of masonry beneath the eaves, the small bell-cote set at the north-east corner was built. Sant'Emiliano lost its central role as a place of worship precisely in this period, when the new parish church was built in the centre of the village. The decline continued until the church was finally abandoned and deconsecrated. It was not until the 1950s that the church, once restored, regained its original Romanesque appearance, to be appreciated above all for the homogeneity and compactness of its architecture; like San Cipriano, Sant'Emiliano always served the religious needs of a small farming community. Today the church can be seen on three sides: the façade, the north side and the apse area; as already mentioned, however, the south longitudinal wall is enclosed within more recent farm buildings. The small church is built of locally sourced grey-ivory stones, supplemented by somewhat larger pinkish stones, likewise roughly squared and barely levelled on their exposed faces, the latter used mainly for the door jambs and the corners (studies mention medolo, corna, Botticino marble and Verona red marble). Although the laying in horizontal courses is fairly regular as far as the grey stones are concerned, as is the placing of the pink stones in certain specific stretches of the masonry, the colour contrast remains barely perceptible, and it is difficult to link these differences in colour to an original decorative intent. The gabled façade, entirely devoid of decoration, is cut into on its southern part by the construction of the gateway with a canopy that serves as the entrance to the farm area (see façade photo). The oculus set in the centre, above the entrance, is also a modern addition; the structures of the portal, on the other hand, are original: it consists of a simple rectangular opening set within jambs of Verona red marble, monolithic on the right and made of two pieces on the left, the smaller one supporting the horizontal lintel, the whole surmounted by a projecting arched lunette made of four blocks, again of Verona red marble (traces of medieval fresco can be seen in the lunette, but they are too deteriorated to allow any interpretation); just above this arch a squared pink stone is set into the wall, carved in relief with a Greek cross, three of whose four arms have been chiselled away. In this section the masonry differs slightly from that of the north longitudinal wall and the apse area: here the stone blocks are slightly larger up to the level of the portal lunette, where the separation is more marked between the fairly large stones below and the parts above in smaller blocks, which tend to become smaller still towards the top. The north longitudinal wall is visible almost in its entirety (see north side photo); its compact, homogeneous masonry has the same building characteristics as those parts of the façade that belong to the Romanesque building, made of barely worked stone blocks of different sizes, laid in horizontal courses in layers of mortar about two centimetres thick (according to experts, these have been supplemented in many places with new mortar from modern restorations). The irregular cutting of the stones and their varied sizes do not allow perfect alignment. Also visible is the different size of the stones in the upper parts of the wall, smaller than those below, where the blocks show slightly more careful working, with the exposed face shaped by rough chiselling. Only the outermost corners, both those of the façade and those of the apse area, are built with large blocks of pink Verona stone, barely worked on the exposed faces. In this northern stretch of wall there are no openings except for a narrow door, with its threshold raised above the present ground level, set near the apse end and framed by monolithic jambs and a horizontal lintel of pink Verona marble, devoid of decoration. This opening would appear to belong to the original building, although it has probably not entirely escaped restoration. On the north-east corner a small bell-cote of small red bricks was raised, with a simple single opening for the bell. This addition would date from the 16th–17th centuries, when the roofs were rebuilt, the oculus was inserted in the façade and the apse hemicycle was heightened. The masonry of the massive semicircular apse (see apse photo), like the whole masonry of the east end, emphasises the qualities of compactness and homogeneity, accentuated by greater regularity in both the cutting and the size of the grey-ivory stones, along with inserted pink blocks, without however drawing any decorative effect from the colour contrast of the two materials used. It has no pilaster strips, apart from a kind of raised border where it joins the end wall of the nave, and it adopts the decorative motif of monolithic small arches of different materials (mostly pink Verona stone, except three in white stone, see apse detail photo), also slightly different in size and strongly projecting, with broad springers resting on simple corbels with a raised step at the top. A cavetto cornice, again of different stones of different sizes, forms the junction between the apse walls and the curved-tile roof. At the base of the hemicycle the foundation plinth is visible, built with rougher techniques and with considerable use of unworked pebbles. Two elegant double-splayed single-light windows in pink marble are set in the apse (the southern one with monolithic arch, sill and jambs, the central one with monolithic top arch, sill and right jamb, and a left jamb made of two blocks). There is no evidence of a possible third single-light window in the northern section of the hemicycle, since the masonry shows no signs of blocking or restoration. A detail that is difficult to interpret is a section of pilaster strip set into the hemicycle and only partly preserved; all that remains are two squared blocks of light-coloured stone, projecting about ten centimetres, to a height of just under a metre. In the stretch of wall above, as in the couple of metres or so below, corresponding to the hypothetical continuation of the pilaster strip, irregularities and adjustments can be seen in the arrangement of the blocks, probably made after parts of this pilaster strip were dismantled. According to scholars, this anomaly would have resulted from the 16th-century restoration, which saw the heightening of the apse, as well as the construction of the bell-cote and the roofs and the removal of a second pilaster strip probably set in the southern part of the hemicycle: certainly the projection of the two blocks appears rather conspicuous, if not exaggerated, perhaps excessive for so simple and essential a building. In any case, it is now difficult to establish what architectural function this detail served. It may perhaps have been a simple post supporting wooden service structures. Just below the central single-light window, to the left of that stretch of jamb-pilaster, a block of white stone is set into the wall, projecting about twenty centimetres, at a height of just over a metre from the ground; this small detail too could be regarded as a sort of bracket for perishable structures outside the perimeter of the church, now vanished. These two projecting stones, in such flat masonry, are a peculiarity, just as their structural function must certainly have been a peculiar one. The junction of the southern corner of the nave with the walls of the recent farm buildings is marked by fairly large squared stones, laid, here too, with pink and grey stones alternating irregularly; the whole masonry of the east side shows the same building method, with the sole exception of the upper parts of the end wall of the nave, where the horizontal courses disappear under the plaster and the squaring of the blocks, bedded in thick mortar, becomes rougher (this is presumably the rebuilding carried out when the heightening of the apse was removed in the mid-20th century). What remains visible of the masonry of the south longitudinal wall does not show the same constructional homogeneity found in the other perimeter walls, especially in the upper parts where, although the same practice of using smaller blocks than in the lower parts is maintained, the bedding mortar contains inclusions of brick and fragments of curved tiles. Two brackets project from it, perhaps indicating former supports for perishable roofs. The present building measures 9 paces in width by 16 in length, measured at the north-east corner, plus three paces for the maximum projection of the apse hemicycle. Access to the single hall of the church is eased by two steps, since the cement floor is raised about half a metre above the level of the churchyard. The interior (see interior photo) is poorly lit, since the only openings admitting light are the façade oculus, the two apse windows and the door-window set in the north longitudinal wall. continued >>>