From the Acts of the sacred visit of the bishop of Sora Monsignor Felice Tamburrelli in these years, the first details of the interior of the church of Canneto emerge, as well as the first historical news of the traditional festivities of the Madonna and the existence of a small church dedicated to the SS. Annunziata, located on the esplanade of the temple.
The visit to the shrine, by special mandate of the bishop, was carried out by d. Michele Cardelli, archpriest of Settefrati. In his report to the prelate, the reverend convisitor made the following notes:
Inside the church was the high altar, which, however, lacked the necessary requirements for celebrating Mass, and since there were water leaks on the walls, the roof needed to be repaired as soon as possible.
On 22 August, the octave of the Assumption, the feast of Our Lady of Canneto was celebrated there with a large crowd of citizens and faithful, coming from many towns and cities. On the eve of the feast, in accordance with an ancient and praiseworthy tradition, the entire clergy of Settefrati set out early in the morning in procession towards the said church, slowly ascending the mountains and carrying the relics of the various saints. There, at the canonical time, the first solemn vespers were sung.
On the feast day, for the convenience of the people, several Masses were celebrated not only in the large church, but also in the chapel of the Annunziata, which stood on the square. After the individual celebrations, bread, known as panicelli, was distributed to the faithful.
The offerings, which were collected during the solemn Mass, went to the church of Canneto, which, moreover, was obliged at its own expense to ensure morning and evening meals for all the priests attending and, of course, also for the lay staff working at the sanctuary in those days, as well as to provide the wheat needed to bake those loaves.
The Church of Our Lady had an annual income of 180 ducats, which was donated to the seminary in Sora to support the many adolescents, who devoted themselves to humanistic studies and music here. Praising this pious and recommendable work, the Reverend Convisitator concluded his report.
In the second sacred visitation, which took place in May 1642, three years later, the administrators of the seminary of Sora, on which the Church of Our Lady continued to depend, were instructed to move the high altar to the back wall and to
to widen the space of one palm; to remove or dismantle the two false altars located in said church; to repair the wall at the rear of the temple; to remove the wood placed on the beams of said church; and finally, to provide the altar with the necessary fittings, to place the candlesticks and
to provide you with a stool.
Therefore, at that time, there were three altars inside the church of Canneto, one central altar (the high altar), which at that time lacked part of the essential furnishings for celebrating there, and two side altars, which had to be removed, all located in the back wall, without an apse, and corresponding respectively to the three naves.
The back wall was none other than the perimeter wall, located to the east, of the transverse nave or transept, built at the time of Abbot d. Frederick de Mamlion and remained so until our time. The apse or semicircular construction of this terminal part of the church, behind the high altar, only recently arose with the work of
extension of the sacred building, which took place in the period 1951-1957.
In the years we are talking about (1639-1642), the centre altar was home to the Chapel of Our Lady, as will be better confirmed by the testimony of 1693, mentioned later.
From the two documents under examination, we also learn that the seminary of Sora, which was entitled to all the income from the benefice of Canneto for the high educational and training purpose indicated, was also responsible for the maintenance and operation of the church of the
Our Lady, the food for the priests and lay staff on the two days of the feast and the baking of the panicelli to be distributed to the people.
However, since the annual income was barely sufficient to maintain the pious institute's pupils and schools, the seminary officials delegated this task of preparing food and bread for the two days of the feast to the tenants of the sanctuary's lands, as can be seen from the various tenancy contracts, which were renewed periodically and which date from 1677 to 1830.
Meanwhile, it should be remembered here that in the documents we are examining and in those we will take into consideration, given the specific purpose of this historical research, we privilege the news relating to the structural and administrative aspects of the church of Canneto, not omitting, however, to mention the other news contained therein, especially if they are of great importance for the history of our sanctuary, such as those we find in the two documents in question, especially in the first, the one dated 1639, which is richer in detail, where we find the first historical hints of certain centuries-old traditions and customs of Canneto, such as the feast day of the Madonna, the procession of relics on the eve of the feast, the existence of an external chapel of the Annunziata and the distribution of panicelli.
The day of the festival
It was and has remained forever 22 August, the octave of the Assumption. In the collective letter of 25 November 1475 of the two Roman cardinals, Bartolomeo di S. Clemente and Giuliano di S. Pietro in Vincoli, the future Pope Julius II, 22 August was one of the five days on which one could visit the church of Canneto to gain the 100-day indulgence: the Assumption, the Octave, the Nativity of Mary, the Nativity of St John the Baptist and the Dedication of the church.
But as time passed, four of those feasts, one after the other, declined and by July 1639, when the first document under consideration is dated, only the octave of the Assumption remained. If one then considers that this feast day appears as far back as November 1475 in the collective letter of indulgences, it is not illogical to think that 22 August had become the primary feast day of the Our Lady of Canneto.
I would add that for the history and Marian devotion of the sanctuary of Canneto, the octave of the Assumption was and remains of great interest also under the theological-liturgical and iconographic aspect, because within the solemnity of the feast of the Assumption, the cult of the Madonna Bruna and its ancient simulacrum must originally have been the statue of the Assumption, which then, from the place where its church was located, began to be called Our Lady of Canneto.
The procession of relics
It took place on 21 August, on the eve of the feast day, from Settefrati to Canneto. It was “a laudable and ancient custom”, as archpriest Cardelli wrote, which therefore had its origins in times before 1639.
These relics were obviously those, which until 1574, as will be recalled, had been in the church of Canneto, and which at the time of the bishop of Sora Giovannelli, around 1618, had been moved and kept in the archpriesthood of Settefrati under the altar of the patron saint St. Stephen.
On the same day and equally early in the morning, a procession similar to that of Settefrati moved on the opposite side of the Melfa river from the neighbouring village of Picinisco to Canneto. They were the canons of the collegiate church of St Lawrence, who, followed by a jubilant populace, brought up here the relics of the saints in the endowment of that distinguished church. They were two neighbouring peoples in jubilation, both of whom had always witnessed the Marian epiphanies of Canneto.
Because of the presence of so many relics and so many people, 21 August in Canneto itself became a feast day, which was called: “Feast of Relics”. As an external event, it was organised by the shepherds, who stayed in the mountains in the summer and bore the costs, offering the exquisite products of their flocks in abundance.
This feast, fruit of the good relations that existed between the two neighbouring peoples, continued to be celebrated for almost a century, then, due to misunderstandings and jealousies that were easy to arise, especially in those times, between neighbouring towns, it declined and survived only in Picinisco within that parish. Here, on 21 August each year, on the solemnity of the patronal feast, in memory of the ancient splendours of Canneto, the “Feast of the Relics” is still celebrated.
The Annunziata Chapel. A new pilgrimage on 25 March
Due to the ever-increasing influx of pilgrims, the church of Canneto proved to be increasingly inadequate to hold the crowds of faithful, especially on the feast day, so that most of them, in order to participate in the religious rites, had to be content to remain in the square in front of it, which in those distant times was still cluttered with rocky outcrops that greatly reduced the space available for standing.
Hence the need to build a chapel on the parvis, at the edge of the beech forest opposite, where the crowds that had flocked, while remaining outside the large church, could easily (“ob populi commodum”), attend the solemn Mass of the feast and approach the Eucharist.
The small temple was dedicated to the Annunciation, both as a homage to a Marian title that was “in vogue” everywhere at the time (churches or chapels with this name also sprang up in some Val Comino villages, starting with the parish church of SS. Annunziata di Villa Latina), or as the result of a new pilgrimage to Canneto, in addition to that of 22 August, which took place on 25 March each year, which must have preexisted the date of 1639 itself and which later developed and survived until the time of the First World War.
Panicles
The distribution of panicelli in Canneto on the feast of Our Lady on 22 August, which we find documented for the first time in 1639, must have been a very ancient custom of Benedictine origin, dating back to the period when the Cassinese monks were up here, officiating at the church of S. Maria di Canneto, i.e. from 1288 to 1569, when the sanctuary's land passed from the jurisdiction of Montecassino back to that of the diocese of Sora and was united by Bishop Monsignor Gigli to the Sorano seminary.
In fact, in the “Land of St Benedict”, the Cassinese curia had to give a panicello (“unum panicellum”) to the tenants who at Christmas, Easter or on the feast of St Benedict punctually brought the various donations (eggs, chickens, doughnuts, parts of slaughtered animals and the like) due to the abbey for the use of land belonging to it. We find mention of this in an instrument dated 26 November 1270.
In Canneto, the custom of the panicelli, in my opinion, was meant to be, in this Benedictine style, a small “present” or “thank you” from the shrine's administration for the many offerings, which in many ways the faithful made to Our Lady's church, in support of the work of the shrine. A chain of generosity, which has never failed over the centuries and still endures today.
Taken from the book by Monsignor Dionigi Antonelli - La chiesa di S. Maria di Canneto: dalle antiche costruzioni all'attuale ristrutturazione generale