(first part)
From an ancient parchment dating back to 922, it turns out that it was the church of Santa Maria, located in Monte Vellate, at a height of 880 meters above sea level, to name the Sacro Monte of Varese; although more ancient documents report that it was St. Ambrose in 389 to bring the first altar on top of the mountain as a thank you of victory over the Arians.
In 1196 the church underwent a Romanesque reconstruction and, throughout the medieval period, the fortified structures around the same church retained their military-defensive function in such a way as to represent one of the most important fortified areas of the County of Seprio.
In the same period develops the concept of the sacred mountain or holy mountain; concept for other already developed in several Semitic and Mediterranean religions (Mount Olympus, Mount Sinai, Mount Tabor). This concept also fits with the fact that the high ground is beginning to be viewed as ecstatic and allegorical way of asceticism of the spirit. In the first half of the fifteenth century, in fact, groups of hermits settled on the mountain to live a life of prayer and sacrifice. It was after this phenomenon was made the first hermitages (1452 - Blessed Caterina and Beata Giuliana).
The third rebuilding of the church was carried out in 1472 and was the work of the noble house of Sforza, who also commissioned the construction of the "Porta Sforza" (Photo 2) built in 1532 and is still present on site.
San Carlo Borromeo (1538-1584) gave new impetus to the religious fervor renewing the ancient tradition of Marian pilgrimages. It was thanks to such fervor that was conceived the Sacred Way and was, at the same time, thanks to the intuition of a noble Capuchin friar, Father Giambattista Aguggiari from Monza, which he thought to represent, in a didactic-symbolic key, the theological content of the doctrine Catholic on the Mysteries of the Rosary.
Officially the start of work is dated March 25, 1605, Annunciation Day. The end of this majestic work is reported in the last decade of the seventeenth century.
Later they have followed numerous restorations, while maintaining more or less intact the external structure of the chapels, have not always been able to preserve from decay the many places frescoes to ornament the same chapels. In fact, many of them have been irretrievably lost. [...]
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