Santuario Maria SS. della Rocca

Beautiful, too bad the church was closed

The sanctuary of the Rocca, formerly called sacta Maria de Arce, of medieval origin, links its name and the most ancient events concerning it to the nearby fortress, the emblem of Tolfa yesterday and today. It has always been dedicated to the Madonna and for the people of Tolfa Vecchia it has remained a place of special Marian devotion from the very beginning. Originally, in the small church near the Castle, a statue of the Madonna was venerated and the feast of the Assumption was celebrated there, as well as the popular propitiatory rite of the Rogations. From 1695 the image of the Virgin of the Pietà with Saints Bartholomew and Emidio was placed there today. After the medieval period, the Rocca church underwent a moment of decline in its structures; the documents indicate the need for the roof to be rebuilt. Providentially, in 1567, it was restored at the expense of the community at the request of the Confraternity of the Name of God, a partnership linked to the Order of Preachers (Dominicans) which at that time was also established in Tolfa. In 1695, as already mentioned, the image of the Pietà, initially venerated in the church of San Giovanni (now disappeared, but of which photos and reconstructions remain) was transferred to the Rocca. In the same year, Cardinal Savio Millini, bishop of Sutri also ordered the restoration of the altar and the "renewal" of the image that had been placed there in ancient times, that is, the statue placed in the niche on the high altar which has now disappeared. From 1695 the church, already guarded by hermit priests and lay hermits appointed by the brotherhood, officially took the name of Ecclesia Beatae Maria Virgine de Pietate, to highlight the new presence of the venerated icon that portrayed the Mother of Sorrows with the dead Christ in her lap between angels and saints, canvas of the Bolognese school inspired by Michelangelo's Pietà and by the works of Giovanni Francesco Gessi, a Bolognese painter who also worked in Lazio. The presence of guardian hermits, including some dressed in the habit and spirituality of the Servants of Mary, singular propagators of the devotion to Our Lady of Sorrows, is an indication of the high consideration of sacredness that invested the Marian place. It was above all one of these lay hermits, Fra Giuseppe Catalini who dedicated himself with extraordinary care to the sanctuary for fifty years (1861-1911). In 1888 he promoted a widespread collection of begging for the construction of the majestic marble altar that houses the holy image. The solemn temple was designed by the Franciscan artist Father Cosma da Cori OFM and made with precious material by Ercole Alliata of Civitavecchia and Luigi Martinelli of Rome, well-known marble artists. The contribution of Alessandro Bartoli, the famous collector of historical Tolfetan memories, designer of the Eucharistic ciborium, was also precious. The hermit Catalini also enriched the sanctuary with the sacristy and the via Matris (seven crosses that recall the seven sorrows of Mary) and carried out the arrangement of the road and a gate on the door of the church which still allows today the incessant vision of the icon considered unanimously miraculous