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What to See · Churches

Church of San Giovanni Battista (Chiuso)

Ramo di Lecco

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The church of San Giovanni Battista, in Chiuso, a district of Lecco on the road to Bergamo, is also called the church of Blessed Serafino: here rests don Serafino Morazzone, parish priest of Chiuso from 1773 to 1822 and confessor of Alessandro Manzoni. The small building, of Romanesque origin, hides 15th-century frescoes in the presbytery.

History

Chiuso was the last village before the border: the church was built near the old limit between the Duchy of Milan and the Republic of Venice, on an earlier 13th-century building. The regional record places the construction between the late 13th and the 17th century; the City of Lecco explains that in the 17th century there were rebuildings, owing to the continual military incursions linked to the closeness of the border, and assigns to that phase the balustrade and the cross vault of the sacristy. The present look is 19th-century: the façade, the bell tower and the interior were renewed.

The regional record describes the result in detail. The hall is single, with stone walls and a roof of polychrome terracotta tiles on a wooden frame and pointed transverse arches; the apse is square and has a barrel vault. The front is a projecting block added as an enlargement of the original church, with the doorway lowered with respect to the new street level and an internal stair leading to the level of the hall; the bell tower is absorbed in the projecting block. The same enlargement produced the sacristy and the side chapel where Morazzone’s remains lie.

Blessed Serafino and Manzoni

Serafino Morazzone was born in Milan on 1 February 1747 and died in Lecco on 13 April 1822. As parish priest of Chiuso he heard Alessandro Manzoni’s confessions, perhaps until 1818, when the family parted with the Caleotto villa where it lived. In Fermo e Lucia, the first draft of the novel, the writer gave him a real eulogy, and wrote of Chiuso as the last village between the territory of Lecco and that of Bergamo; in The Betrothed that eulogy disappeared and the character became an ordinary priest. The City and Lecco Tourism recall that in the rooms of the neighbouring parsonage, according to Manzoni, the conversion of the Unnamed took place before Cardinal Federigo Borromeo.

The body was buried in the small cemetery beside the oratory of San Giovanni and in 1858, at the wish of the population, moved into the building, to the chapel on the right of the nave made by the faithful. After the declaration of venerability (17 December 2007), the beatification came on 26 June 2011, in a ceremony in Piazza del Duomo in Milan.

What to see

The gabled façade and the single hall with a truss ceiling reveal the Romanesque origins. The presbytery has a barrel vault with a Christ Pantocrator in a mandorla and the four Doctors of the Church enthroned; the end wall carries a Crucifixion with many figures, in the intrados of the arch the Prophets. The frescoes are of the 15th century, but the author is disputed: Lecco Tourism and eccoLecco give them to Giovan Pietro da Cemmo, a painter from the Valcamonica; the City speaks of an unknown master influenced by Brescian figurative culture, or of the Baschenis of the Val Averara; the website of the Museum of Blessed Serafino adds the Master of Nave among the most recent hypotheses. In a side chapel one sees the urn and the case that held the blessed’s remains.

Next to it stands the parish church of Santa Maria Assunta, at via Innominato 2, with the parsonage that today houses the Museum of Blessed Serafino Morazzone: documents and objects of the priest and some original lithographs of The Betrothed by Roberto Focosi, of about 1830. The City also mentions a fresco by Casimiro Radice (1834-1908) with the conversion of the Unnamed. For the places of the novel there is the Manzonian Lecco itinerary.

Practical information

  • The church is in via Pietro da Cemmo in Chiuso, Lecco (the regional record gives corso Bergamo).
  • According to the website of the Museum of Blessed Serafino (undated) the hours are 8-17 in winter and 8-19 in summer; weekday Mass on Thursday and Friday at 8.30, Sunday Mass at 8.30. From the same site, the church is accessible to disabled people and there are toilets in the adjacent public park.
  • The museum is visited by telephone booking, according to Lecco Tourism, with the parish of Santa Maria Assunta of Chiuso (0341 423380): it is best to phone before going.

Sources

On the map

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