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Sanctuary of the Madonna delle Cese in Collepardo: A Church In a Cave in the Ernici Mountains
The Sanctuary of the Madonna delle Cese is built inside a cave, at an altitude of 698m, in the territory of Collepardo (province of Frosinone). It is reached on foot from the Certosa di Trisulti (Trisulti Charterhouse): a 20-minute descent through the woods, past bronze statues of the Mysteries of the Rosary. The name “Cese” is thought to derive from the Latin caedo (to cut), denoting cleared woodland. Inside the cave a spring flows that the faithful believe to be miraculous. A place dominated by absolute silence, broken only by the sound of water and birdsong.
From the 6th-century hermit to Innocent III
According to tradition the first hermit arrived in the 6th century, and there has also been an apparition of the Virgin Mary, who is said to have left her image imprinted on the rock. The earliest certain historical document is a will of 1274, in which a certain Pietro di Egidio left 12 denarii to the “Virgin of the Cese”. By 1319 a chapel already existed. But the history of the sanctuary is inextricably linked to the Charterhouse: Cardinal Lotario dei Conti di Segni, who owned a villa nearby, often visited the hermit living in the cave. In 1198 he became Pope Innocent III, and in 1204 founded the Charterhouse of Trisulti.
The lost fresco and the 17th-century canvas
The original image, painted on the rock, was removed in the 17th century and taken to the Charterhouse, where it is still preserved in a reliquary case. In its place hangs a canvas of the Madonna of Mount Carmel, attributed to Fra Francesco David, a Spanish Carthusian painter active at Trisulti until 1721.
