Sanctuary of San Cosimo alla Macchia: History, Restorations, and Devotion

The Sanctuary of San Cosimo alla Macchia, located in Oria in the province of Brindisi, is a place of deep Christian devotion and a site of significant historical importance. Recently, restoration and enhancement works have been initiated, including the reorganization and expansion of the sacristy and the Assistance Center, the covering of the outdoor altar, and the restructuring of the cloister porticoes. Additionally, the expansion of the Sacred Art Museum is underway.

Enhancement Projects and Accessibility

The disused area adjacent to the sanctuary, covering approximately 186,000 square meters, will be equipped with rest and refreshment facilities. The current provincial road, which crosses the areas in front of the sanctuary, will be rerouted and transformed into a municipal road with a bicycle path and pedestrian walkways, thereby improving accessibility to the sanctuary.

The History of the Sanctuary and the Relics

According to tradition, the Sanctuary of San Cosimo houses the relics of five martyr brothers, the exact origin of which remains uncertain. The first document attesting to the presence of the relics dates back to the 17th century. In the Pastoral Visit of Bishop Lucio Fornari in 1602, the presence of the relics of Saints Cosmas and Damian is mentioned.

In 1783, Bishop Alessandro Maria Kalefati obtained additional relics of the Holy Physicians from Pope Pius VI, including a piece of the humerus of Saint Cosimo and a piece of the femur bone of Saint Damian. These relics were later preserved in an artistic gilded bronze reliquary, crafted in Paris and still visible today.

Ancient Cult and Historical Events

Oria is one of the oldest centers in Puglia dedicated to the cult of the Holy Physicians. Tradition holds that in the 8th century, Eastern monks, fleeing the iconoclastic struggles, founded the hamlet of San Cosimo alla Macchia. However, the hamlet suffered destruction during Saracen and Arab invasions between the 9th and 10th centuries.

The first mentions of the hamlet date back to the early 14th century. Over the centuries, the fiefdom changed hands among various nobles until the 17th century, when it was ceded as a simple fief to the Noble Domino Nicolao Francisco Papatodero Oritano.

The Diocese of Oria and Its Relations with Brindisi

The history of the diocese of Oria is complex and intertwined with that of Brindisi. In the 6th century, due to Lombard and Saracen raids, many faithful and clergy from Brindisi took refuge in Oria. This temporary transfer lasted until 1089, when Pope Urban II ordered the bishops to return to Brindisi. However, the diocese of Oria continued to exist as an independent seat, officially recognized in 1591.

The Sanctuary Today

The Sanctuary of San Cosimo alla Macchia continues to be a place of pilgrimage and devotion. Testimonies of received graces fill an entire hall, coming from cities in Puglia and Italian emigrants abroad. The ex-votos, which include painted tablets, goldsmith objects, and photographs, testify to the deep faith of the devotees.

Since 1980, the sanctuary has been maintained by a community of nuns, who take care of cleaning and welcoming visitors. A priest from Oria celebrates Mass daily and hears confessions, ensuring that the liturgy is never lacking.

Conclusions

The Sanctuary of San Cosimo alla Macchia is not only a place of prayer but also a witness to the history and religious culture of Oria and Puglia. With the recent restoration and enhancement works, the sanctuary continues to be a reference point for devotees and an important historical heritage to be preserved for future generations.

Sources and Publications

For further insights, a publication dedicated to the ex-votos and a volume documenting the miracles that have occurred, based on the testimonies of the beneficiaries, are currently in print.

Final Notes

Oria remains the oldest center of worship dedicated to the Holy Physicians in southern Italy, testifying to a devotion that has endured through the centuries and a history rooted in the period of the first raids and the transfer of bishops during the barbarian invasions.

Other Raw Sources and Various News

Restoration and enhancement works are being carried out at the Sanctuary of San Cosimo, including the reorganization and expansion of the sacristy and the Assistance Center, the covering of the outdoor altar, and the restructuring of the cloister porticoes.

The Sacred Art Museum is also undergoing restructuring and expansion. The disused area adjacent to the Sanctuary of San Cosimo (approximately 186,000 square meters) will be equipped with rest and refreshment facilities;

furthermore, the current provincial road, which cuts through the areas in front of the Sanctuary of San Cosimo, will be rerouted and transformed into a municipal road with an attached bicycle path and pedestrian walkways to reach the sanctuary.

Description: According to tradition, the Sanctuary of San Cosimo possesses the relics of five martyr brothers, the exact origin of which cannot be determined due to the lack of any documentary evidence. Oria, in fact, is one of the few centers in Puglia where all five martyr brothers are venerated.

The first document attesting to the presence of the relics dates back to the 17th century. In the volume containing the acts of the Pastoral Visit made by Bishop Lucio Fornari of Oria in the cathedral on April 22, 1602 (p. 20 verso), it is explicitly stated that among the many relics present in that church were those of Saints Cosmas and Damian.

In 1783, the city of Oria was enriched with new relics. The priest Alessandro Maria Kalefati (1726-1793), canon of the cathedral of Bari, who became bishop of Oria in 1781, requested from Pope Pius VI some relics of the Holy Physicians, including a piece of the humerus of about 3 inches of Saint Cosimo, a piece of the femur bone of Saint Damian, a piece of the tibia of Saint Antimus, the radius of Saint Euprepius; a piece of the femur of Saint Leontius.

In 1783, Alessandro Maria Kalefati arrived in Oria and deposited the relics there. On each relic, he had attached a label, on which, in his own handwriting, as can still be seen, he had noted the name of the saint to whom it belonged.

The box containing the relics remained kept in the House of the Mission of the Vincentian Fathers until 1808, when the mayor of Oria, Giuseppe Salerno, wrote to the bishop of the time, Mons. Fabrizio Cimino, to request permission to place and seal the relics in a new wooden urn. Having obtained permission, with a letter from 1808, the Vicar, before enclosing the relics in the urn, proceeded with the necessary investigation.

The relics continued to be kept in that wooden urn until it, corroded by time, was replaced by an artistic gilded bronze reliquary, crafted in Paris. In this new reliquary, which is the one still preserved today, in 1879 the relics extracted from the old urn were placed.

Date of use: between the year 1590 and the year 1602

Image: Relic Statue: Bones

Location: Woods

Original location of the Sanctuary: In a special room located inside the sanctuary complex.

Notes on the collection: Testimonies of received graces fill an entire hall. These come largely from cities in Puglia; to these are added those of Italian emigrants abroad.

Types of ex-votos: Tablets or plaques with inscriptions, Painted tablets, Goldsmith objects, Anthropomorphic figurines, Real or represented prostheses, Various objects, Photographs, Other

Current conservation: For security reasons, we omit the current location Reference to publications or printed descriptions: A publication dedicated to the ex-votos is currently in print.
A volume on the different types of miracles is in preparation, in which the miracles that have occurred will be documented based on the testimonies of the beneficiaries, including some still living.
Oria is considered the center where the oldest cult of the Holy Physicians in southern Italy is recorded. According to tradition, in the 8th century, Eastern monks, due to the iconoclastic struggles, came to the West and, among others, founded the hamlet of San Cosimo alla Macchia, where they built a church for the Holy Physicians. In 924, the Saracens would have sacked and destroyed the city of Oria and the surrounding territory.

With the destruction of the hamlet of San Cosimo, it is believed that the small church was also damaged. The hamlet also suffered destruction by the Agareni Arabs (around 977). We therefore consider the period between 750 and 800 as the start date of the sanctuary’s life cycle and the time between 924 and 977 as the end date.
The first news of the hamlet of San Cosimo alla Macchia, where the Sanctuary of San Cosimo is located, dates back to the early 14th century, as it was enfeoffed in 1314 to the knight Goffredo de Baudonio, succeeded the following year by the baron Angelo De Bernardis from Matera. In 1348, it was owned by the baron Cervo de Palmerio of Capua (perhaps the namesake near Nardò). Towards the end of the 14th century, it was owned by the countess Maria d’Engherrio, who sold it in 1407 to the baron Luigi d’Acaia. In the early 1600s, abandoned by the few remaining inhabitants, it was ceded as a simple fief to the Noble Domino Nicolao Francisco Papatodero Oritano, whose heirs owned it for many years. The cult, however, to the Holy Physicians Cosmas and Damian, spread in the diocese by the Calogeri, did not die out. On May 5, 1901, Bishop Mons. Teodosio Maria Gargiulo solemnly consecrated the church. On May 19, 1985, Cardinal Sebastiano Baggio, Camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church, consecrated the new altar in the external square of the Sanctuary of San Cosimo.

Regarding the diocese of Oria, in whose territory the Sanctuary of San Cosimo is located, there is the vexata quaestio whether the episcopal see of Brindisi was at some point transferred to Oria for security reasons following Lombard and Saracen raids and other events or whether the diocese of Oria was independent from that of Brindisi.

Since the 6th century, the series of bishops of Brindisi presents interruptions and gaps that extend until the 10th century. The causes are to be found in the depopulation due to malaria, the Lombard invasion, and the Saracen raids. In just over 50 years, Brindisi was conquered 7 times; in 845 and 20 years later, the Saracens sacked it so much that the bishop, the clergy, and most of the faithful had to take refuge in Oria. Oria, however, also knew the Saracen sackings in 924 and 927 and particularly in 975, when the city was abandoned by its inhabitants.

During the 10th century, the series and names of the bishops of Brindisi became more regular and more certain. In the following century, bishops appear who call themselves archbishops of Oria, even though they were ordinaries of Brindisi. M. Monti believes that the archbishops of Brindisi, having chosen Oria as their habitual residence, because it was a safer location among the various dioceses they administered, signed documents as archbishops of Oria, even though they were archbishops of Brindisi. When the Normans arrived in Puglia, the reconstruction of the city of Brindisi was imposed with the transfer in vetere civitate of the few citizens who had been camped inland for more than three centuries.

When Urban II came to Melfi for the synod of 1089, Goffredo, nephew of Robert Guiscard, asked the pope to go to Brindisi to consecrate the Cathedral there and to restore the city’s ancient primacy, making the bishops return who had almost always been in Oria. Urban, back in Rome, wrote to Archbishop Godino, ordering him to bring his cathedra back to Brindisi. It is known, meanwhile, that Archbishop Godino, perhaps also forced by the Oritani, but certainly evaluating the risks involved in the transfer to a city easily attacked from the sea and in an early construction phase, resisted the papal orders until he was explicitly threatened with removal from office. After various events, Godino returned to Brindisi, but continued to title himself archbishop of Oria and Brindisi, while Oria remained in the archiepiscopal title and shared with Brindisi the diocesan area, becoming an associated diocese with centers of uncertain belonging if not explicitly declared as part of the Archiepiscopal Mensa of Brindisi in the administrative documents of the Roman curia. Conflicts and controversies continued throughout the 12th century until the 14th, when Paul III, on May 20, 1545, once again rejected the requests of the inhabitants of Oria who insisted on having the archbishop in their city. Gregory XIV, with a bull of May 10, 1591, established Oria as an autonomous episcopal see, free from subjection to the archbishop of Brindisi and almost suffragan to the archbishop of Taranto. In 1942, the existence of the bishop of Oria Magelpoto, of Lombard origin, as the name engraved on the marble that remembers him as the builder of a church suggests, was discovered. He was the first bishop who transferred from Brindisi, when the city was occupied and destroyed by the Lombards, the episcopal see to Oria, where the conquerors had established themselves against the Byzantines with defensive works, such as the vallo delle Case grandi near the Sanctuary of San Cosimo. It was therefore determined, by the destruction of Brindisi by the Lombards, which occurred between 668 and 677, the institution in Oria of an episcopal see as a transfer of that of Brindisi.

The position that the bishops of the see of Oria had between the Byzantines and the Lombards in contention was delicate and important. It was then perhaps that the Byzantines thought of linking this diocese to the metropolitan of Santa Severina. A great personality was Theodosius, bishop in Oria in the last quarter of the 9th century. He managed to keep Byzantines and Lombards at peace and to make the Latin and Greek Churches coexist in the diocese. It is believed that in 886 he was engaged by Pope Stephen V for a mission to Constantinople and that he then also obtained from the same pope the relics of Saints Chrysanthus and Daria, which had been transferred at that very time from the church of Santa Prassede to the Lateran. The bull of separation of the two dioceses is dated May 8, 1591; the last archbishop who governed them united was Bernardino de Figueroa; the first who governed the diocese of Oria alone, which with the separation became suffragan to the metropolitan see of Taranto, was Vincenzo Del Tufo.
Grant of the Jubilee Indulgence from December 25, 1999, to January 5, 2001.
According to ancient testimonies, the small Chapel, since very distant times, was run by a priest with the title of Archpriest.

Since 1980, the ancient building has been permanently occupied by Nuns of a nascent Religious Community, who, while taking care of the cleaning and decorum of the church, offer hospitality to the stranger who goes there to visit the Saints. And so that the liturgy is not lacking in the sanctuary, a priest comes from Oria every day to celebrate Mass and hear confessions.
Mons. Montefusco, after having adopted disciplinary measures against the rebellious priest Giuseppe Recchi, who had installed himself as Chaplain in the rural church of San Cosimo and had had himself recognized as such by the Government Authority, had to resort administratively to the Ministry and judicially to the Court of Lecce and the Court of Appeal of Trani. With respective sentences of December 9, 1890, and July 21, 1891, he obtained complete victory over the intruding Chaplain, vindicating the rights of the bishop over the Sanctuary of San Cosimo alla Macchia. Without regard to money and effort, Mons. Montefusco sustained a long administrative lawsuit at the Ministry and, to general satisfaction, managed to obtain the sentence of retroduction, signed by Zanardelli, which is listed in the volume of documents and trial acts, existing in the Archive of the Episcopal Curia of Ostuni.
Following the revolutionary movements of 1860, wanted and directed by Freemasonry, even the bishop of Oria, Mons. Margarita, had to flee from his seat to Francavilla and then to Naples.

Taking advantage of these political disturbances and the absence of the bishop, the priest Giuseppe Recchi, with intrigues, had managed to install himself as Chaplain in the rural church of San Cosimo, and had had himself recognized as such by the Government Authority, to which he had falsely reported that the appointment was of royal patronage.
The Succantor Monaco, retired in the House of the Missionaries, agitated by scruples for the damage caused to the Episcopal Mensa by his procedure, wanted to rectify his error. By an act of April 25, 1750, drawn up by the priest Domenico Agliata of Torre Santa Susanna, Apostolic Notary, he declared that, lying, he had obtained the Pontifical Bulls, while in reality the church of San Cosimo alla Macchia was no longer an Ecclesiastical Benefice, as it had once been, but only a church united spiritually and temporally to the Episcopal Mensa of Oria. Having thus rectified the matter, and having highlighted the true legal nature of the rural church, follow in the process the sworn testimonies of the Archdeacon Giacinto Ferretti and the Cantor Zefirino Giordano, given on April 27, 1750.
Since the time when Mons. Tommaso Francia (1697-1719) governed the diocese of Oria, the Succantor Francesco Antonio Monaco had been entrusted by the bishop with the administration of the church of San Cosimo alla Macchia; a mandate that was confirmed to him by the successor bishop, Mons. Giovan Battista Labanchi (1720-1746), because that priest, in public opinion, enjoyed a good reputation. In 1738, when Bishop Labanchi had already fled from Oria due to the persecution brought against him by Michele III Imperiale, Marquis of Oria and Prince of Francavilla, and by some Oritan families, the Succantor Monaco, fearing that the administration of the church of San Cosimo would be taken from him, denounced to the Holy See that the church was a vacant benefice and under the patronage of his family. He therefore requested, and obtained, the investiture and was put in possession by Mons. La Gatta, bishop of Bitonto and apostolic visitor, who at that time administered the diocese of Oria, in the absence of Mons. Labanchi.

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