Church of Santa Maria

The pieve (parish church) of Santa Maria a Pontenove stands in the countryside west of the town of Bedizzole, near the river Chiese. This ancient human settlement is linked to one of the guarded crossing points of the river. Ancient Pontenove lay on the Roman road known as the “ Via Brixiensis ”, which connected Brescia to Verona. The place name Pontenove itself would indicate the existence of a “ mansio ”, that is, a stopping place and posting station, “ ad novem miliaria ”, that is, “at nine miles (from Brescia)”. Archaeological excavations carried out in 1996-1997 confirmed the Early Christian origins of the religious settlement of Pontenove, which even had two baptismal fonts, the older of which is thought to date back to the 5th or 6th century (see plan) . It is not visible today, as it lies a couple of metres below the present ground level of the north churchyard. It was reached by a few steps; the font was hexagonal in plan and catechumens were baptised by immersion. The basin had walls lined with cocciopesto and a floor formed by a polychrome mosaic decorated with a jewelled cross with the alpha and omega, surrounded by a frame. The ancient Early Christian church to which this font belonged had a single hall, with two rectangular side rooms, one on each side. The baptistery was found precisely in the north room, in the larger of the two spaces into which it was divided. Beneath these structures there seems to have been an earlier Roman building, and proof of this would be, inside, the base of the last pillar on the left before the chancel, which consists of an overturned Roman funerary slab with an inscription and dedication to Caius Julius Aquilinus, dating from the 2nd century AD. In the early Middle Ages a masonry enclosure was built on the churchyard in front of the church, together with a new baptismal font. An excavation in 1972 concerned the area of this new baptistery, but unfortunately the operation was not carried out according to proper criteria of archaeological investigation, and many recovered materials and finds have been lost. It was not possible to establish the original ground level. The remains of an oven (perhaps used to heat the water) were found, along with the octagonal font with steps leading down into the basin. The remains of a small channel linking the baptistery to the well also survive (see photo channel) . This octagonal font, which remained dedicated to St. John until the 16th century, when it was demolished, lies inside a building standing in front of the present church, about thirty metres away. There are no remains of burials in this area, whereas in the adjacent room to the south some tombs have been brought to light, and it seems that this burial area remained continuously in use until the 12th century. The excavation of this part of the Pontenove site nevertheless made it possible to bring to the surface the remains of part of the foundations of the early medieval building; a stretch of ground now occupied by the road leading to the farmstead attached to the pieve complex, and the part of the churchyard in front of the present façade, still remain to be investigated. Documentary sources attest the existence of the Romanesque church in 1165 (the one still visible today, regardless of the building works carried out in the late Gothic and Renaissance periods); “with the construction of the medieval church the ancient Early Christian basilica was demolished”. The Romanesque building has a gabled façade (see photo façade) and a basilican plan with three aisles divided by pillars, ending to the east in semicircular apses. In 1480 the portal was rebuilt, and the coat of arms of the parish priest of the time was set into it. Probably in the same period both the oculus at the top and the two large square windows on either side of the portal were opened. Of the three original apses, two remain visible (see photo apse) , while the northern one has been incorporated into the more modern structures of the sacristy and bell tower. The plan of the new church differs slightly from that of the Early Christian building: the new structure is about 3 metres longer and about 4 metres narrower, which is why the ancient 5th-century baptistery now lies outside the perimeter walls of the present church. While the building, in its architectural structure, presents no artistic features worthy of note, the archaeological remains brought to light are important: the two baptismal fonts, the remains of the pluteus with the figure of Christ, and, outside, now used as a small post in the churchyard, a badly deteriorated capital carved with plant motifs that seem to represent the Tree of Life and which, because of this symbolism, may come from the area of the destroyed early medieval octagonal baptistery. In the Romanesque eastern part of the building, again built of roughly worked local stone set in thick layers of mortar, the main apse retains parts of the three pilasters that divided the hemicycle vertically. Given the absence of decoration in the upper parts and the change in the type of masonry, a post-Romanesque raising and rebuilding is assumed for this part of the apse. On the outside, what remains visible of the Romanesque structures consists of stretches of the side walls and part of the double-apsed east end (the part of the south wall towards the façade is now incorporated into farm buildings of recent construction, while the north side wall towards the apse area has been integrated into the present bell tower and sacristy block). The gabled façade has been heavily altered, both by the opening of new apertures (oculus, large side windows and portal) and in the uppermost parts below the roof. The masonry of the Romanesque parts of the perimeter walls is made of roughly worked local stones of various materials, including fragments from the Roman period, set in thick mortar. The continuity of construction of these stretches of wall is visible only here and there; certain patches of masonry in the upper parts show a disorderly assemblage and a wider choice of materials. The two surviving semicircular apses, of different sizes, have the same masonry characteristics as the side walls, except for the base, which instead has the features typical of foundation walls. The only openings on this side of the building are in the main apse, where there are three splayed single-light windows that are probably original, while on the sides, on the north, there are likewise three splayed single-light windows of almost equal size, which would not seem to belong to the Romanesque period (see photo north side) . On the south side three openings still survive, two of them splayed single-light windows and the central one square, here too made in more recent periods, as well as the remains of a walled-up door with a depressed arch of small red bricks. Inside, the walls are entirely covered with a thick layer of plaster that hides the composition of the masonry (see photo interior) . The division into three aisles is marked by undecorated pillars with longitudinal round arches; the roof, a recent work, has trusses. The only interesting visible remains of the Romanesque or pre-Romanesque period is a fragment of a pluteus now placed, certainly not in its original position, in the wall on the left preceding the semicircle of the main apse. Here, in a reassembly, some pieces of a pluteus or chancel slab are set into the wall, carved with three-strand interlace motifs and the remains of Christ on the cross. Only the right hand survives, and the piece of the cross surmounted by an eagle, symbol of John the Evangelist. The figure of Christ carved here is important for the dating of this work, since this kind of representation was not in use until the 10th century; according to scholars, therefore, these remains can be dated to the 10th century (see photo pluteus) . Both on the pillars and on stretches of the perimeter walls there are frescoes of the 14th and 15th centuries (ex-votos, Madonnas, St. Firmus, Sts. Peter and Paul and others, see photo fresco ). It is difficult to propose a chronology that goes beyond a generic “Romanesque period”, given the complexity of the archaeological history of the pieve of Santa Maria. From pre-Romanesque clues, such as the remains of the pluteus, one goes back to the early Middle Ages, which saw the construction of the baptismal area to the west of the present building (the parts of the pluteus kept inside the church might also come from this area), and further back in time to the first centuries of the Christian era, with the baptismal font on the 5th-century mosaic floor: all evidence of a continuous use of the site, which must therefore have undergone changes due also to changes in worship practices. The masonry does not offer any definable chronological solutions. No decoration with small arches or pilasters, except for the main apse, where the remains of the three pilasters that ran vertically up the masonry can still be seen; no search for colour effects in the laying of the ashlars; and the minor apse has no openings at all: it would truly seem to be a monument of little artistic and architectural value. Yet this essentiality and the pleasant setting of this monument make it very close to the medieval religious spirit, made up of simple expressions of faith to be fulfilled in places that allowed the most complete recollection. An important transit centre near the city of Brescia, and suffragan to its bishop, the pieve of Pontenove extended its influence over a vast territory on the edge of the lower Garda area, including the present-day territories of Prevalle, Calvagese, Carzago della Riviera, Mocasina, Bedizzole, Ponte San Marco, Calcinato and Calcinatello.