Between Foligno and Spoleto
Syriac and Armenian hermits settled in the Solenne mountain
near Ferentillo in the Valnerina area to create the first
Christian hermitages in Umbria (V-VI century). From them
arose the coenobium of San Pietro in Valle founded in the
VIII century, the marvellous complex located in a mountain’s
recess in the midst of a luxuriant scrub, at the same time
closed in its spiritualism and open to the world. In the
Monteluco wood, above Spoleto, the ilex grove – the
ancient place sacred to Diana, pagan divinity who in the
dense and compact dark of the wood suddenly reveals itself
in the glade full of sun that takes the light – becomes
the Saint Giuliano hermits’ refuge. Water, both the
surface and underground one, influenced for long time the
organization of the religious life in the space, becoming
an essential and binding point for the settlement of hermits,
abbeys, sanctuaries, shrines and chapels. 
The
Umbrian orography offered rocky walls, forests and inaccessible
natural caves, satisfying the ascetic search of isolation;
the same we can say for the hill pastures, the dells between
the mountains and the narrow rich soil valleys. The thick
and solitary woods represented meditation and pray places
as well as places rich of the necessary resources for the
survival of religious communities.
A place of exceptional spirituality on the spurs of this
part of Appennino is Sant’Eutizio, in the Castoriana
valley near Preci, monastery arose as others in a big environmental
quality area. According to the tradition, there, the first
hermits were Eutizio, Fiorenzo and Spes and what attracted
them, among the other things, was surely the richness of
water that flowed from many sources. Several individual
hermitage – sometimes were natural caves, other times
masonry cells, however often dispersed in a large area -
also there organized themselves in coenobium, while became
more and more deep the sense of brotherhood in the search
of Good as well as the necessities of evangelization of
the territory, organization of the dioceses, suppression
of the pagan cults and politic control of marginal areas.
And was in Norcia, in a moral and natural context that just
presents hermitic and ascetic phenomenon, that Benedetto
and his sister Scolastica were born and lived between the
V and VI century. The Benedict rule of “ora et labora”
provides for a refusal of the world in order to be more
present in it, the retiring in solitary places so as to
deepen in a better way the knowledge of the divine, in communities
in which one can join. Among the others, are communities
of this kind the Benedict hermitage of Cesi, on the side
of the Martani mountains between Cesi and Portaria or the
Abbey of Sassovivo, above Foligno, built in the XI century
by the hermit Mainardo. Other his contemporary mystic figures
are Chiara da Montefalco, Vanna da Orvieto, Margherita da
Città di Castello, that lived in the second part
of XIII century – early XIV, and had very strong spiritual
experiences.
Meditation and imitation of passion are the two main moments
of the mystic itinerary of Rita da Cascia. Many people pointed
out the positively popular features of her sanctity. In
the infinity miracles that the tradition attributes to her,
among many possibilities, she is defined the ‘impossible
miracles saint’. Her miracles always emerges from
a context with country typical elements, the white bees
of her birth that cover her face in the cradle and enter
and go out from her mouth, the dark bees that at her death
shut themselves in the monastery where they still live;
the vine twig that, watered for one year, finally sprouts;
the white rose flowered in winter in the snow near her house
of Roccaporena.
A relationship with the divine that nowadays is still alive,
as we have said, and it is demonstrated from the many communities
that meet on the hill of Umbria and the capacity of attract
new Christian movements bounds to important experiences
in Collepino di Spello, or, always in 
Spello, the teaching of Carlo Carretto. For a stop in these
beautiful areas, you can stay at AGRITURISMO
FIORDALISO , provided also of a restaurant and in which
you will be able to deepen the love for this land through
guided tasting of the typical products and to live together
with the Umbrian people one of the most touching spectacle,
the “Infiorata” (decking of flowers) of Spello,
every year on the Sunday of Corpus Domini. This is the message
that comes from Umbria, a call that goes across the centuries
and makes this land a meeting and peace place, a space still
full of possibilities.
)