OUR LADY OF THE VIRGINS

Day 333: April 10

Our Lady of the Virgins, Macerata, Italy



Since 1355, there has been a small church in this place with the title of  Our Lady of Virgins (Santa Maria dei Vergini). In 1547, having been abandoned and left to fall into ruin for almost sixty years, its custodians, the Friars of the Fountain, decided to demolish it and rebuild another. On April 3, 1547, they obtained the consent of the Municipality, on the condition that a large chapel for the celebration of Holy Mass was left intact. In this chapel, in 1533, Lorenzo Pittori painted the fresco of the Madonna delle Vergini.

On April 10, 1548, Easter Tuesday, in this chapel, Our Lady appeared to a little girl, a certain Bernardina di Bonino, asking that, every Saturday, young girls would carry out processions of penance and fasting in reparation for the sins of the city. Our Lady asked her to inform the citizens that, on Saturday, a procession of girls was to go here, in reparation for the many scandals that reigned in the city.

From that moment, a rain of graces seemed to descend from heaven, so much so that immediately, while waiting for the largest, a small temporary church began to be built, entrusted to the Confraternity of Santa Maria dei Vergini. On September 21, 1550, the first stone of the current magnificent church was laid. In January 1566, the dome was finished.

On May 28, 1566, the church was entrusted to the Carmelite Fathers. The interior of the church was completed in 1582. On March 31, 1605, the fresco of Our Lady of the Virgins was cut from the wall and transported to the large chapel, where it is now, and the old church was demolished.

On October 21, 1696, the image of Our Lady was solemnly crowned. On the occasion of the earthquake of 1703, the Sanctuary was the destination of continuous pilgrimages of penance. In 1798, the church was elevated as a parish and, in 1869, the Government recognized it as a Monument of Art. During the war of 1915-1918, a large part of the building was used as a grain warehouse. In 1926, the parish priest, Father Battista Chiodi, with the consent of the Superintendence of Fine Arts, had the painted canvas, which had covered the fresco of Our Lady for a century, removed, leaving only the face uncovered. The Image of the Virgin thus returns to its original splendor. In the immediate post-war period, thanks to the interest of the parish priest Father Cipriano Conti, the frescoes of the main chapel and the two chapels next to it were restored by Father Gabriele Saggi, a Carmelite, and the floor was redone.

Today the church is called Santa Maria delle Vergini, while at the beginning and until the seventeenth century it was called "of the Virgins", in the masculine, including the reference to both sexes of the adolescents who are under the mantle of the Virgin.


St Justin Russolillo Writes...

"Bring us with you, O most holy Mary, in your perpetual visitation to all souls: to all families, parishes and dioceses; to all the religious houses and holy works and temple of God; make us as your instruments of your perpetual visitation."

(Justin Russolillo, Devotional, Vocationist Editions, Pianura, 2009, p. 123)

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