Castelfiorentino doesn’t come to mind as one of Tuscany’s prime towns to visit. After all, near it are such places as Siena with a cathedral which made even Wagner cry with joy at its beauty, San Gimignano popularily called the mediaeval manhattan because of its tower houses and Certaldo, Boccaccio’s birthplace.
Even approaching Castelfiorentino with its abandoned industrial estate doesn’t entice. Yet it holds easily accessible wonders. We visited it primarily to see the gorgeous frescoes Benozzo Gozzoli (of Medici-Riccardi palace fame for his wondrous nativity painted in the chapel there) created for two local tabernacles. One is the Madonna della Tosse (of the cough – perhaps good for praying to if one has a sore throat). The other is the. Visitation. Both artistic beauties have been rescued from the elements and placed in a purpose-built museum of debatable aesthetic value but very well laid out all the same.
Castelfiorentino has some delightfully untouristy old streets containing a handful of inviting bars, restaurants and shops.It also has a medley of fine renaissance mansions and interesting churches.
The town’s finest ecclesiastical architecture, dedicated to its patron saint, is the sanctuary of Saint Verdiana, a name which means ‘youthful freshness’.
While children just out of school were playing ball games in the extensive green space in front of the church’s graceful eighteenth century façade we entered a baroque interior with a vast painting covering the whole of the nave ceiling and representing the apotheosis of the town’s patroness.
At the BEGO Gozzoli museum the young lady at the ticket desk had told us the story of Saint Verdiana.
‘She embraced a life of poverty, generosity and abstinence always seeking more ways of practising penance and abnegation to the point at which for thirty three years she lived immured in a tiny cell in the company of two spiteful snakes who were constantly biting her in an attempt to throw her out. She performed many miracles: shops empty of supplies found their stores filled with goodies the following morning. People were cured of terrible diseases’. (At this point I wondered whether she would have been able to cure snake bites). ‘At Verdiana ‘s death all the town’s church bells rang simultaneously without anyone handling them. Verdiana was appointed patroness of the town and people began to perform pilgrimages to her austere hovel.’
In the grandiloquent baroque church we found a staircase leading down to the place where Saint Verdiana lived with her two reptilian tormentors. There was no light but fortunately we switched on our telefonino torch and managed to find ourselves before a small brick hut with a barred entrance. Next to it in the tenebrous crypt was the statue of the saint and a little altar.
Today such a person as Verdiana could easily have been delivered into the hands of the local social services for corrective therapy. However, in an age where Faith reigned supreme she was made into a saint and worshipped. Would we call that change of attitude progress? I sometimes wonder.
