Sant’Eufemia is a small church with a very long history: in Incino, a hamlet of Erba, it was for centuries the centre of one of the largest pievi in the area, and its bell tower, 32.7 metres high, is today regarded as the symbol of the town.
History
Its origins are placed in the middle of the 5th century. In support of so early a date the regional record cites the discovery, on nearby land, of funerary stones dated 469 and 491, and the masonry of the apse, which is thought to belong to the original building. The church was a pieve church from the start: in 1285 the pieve of Incino included 61 churches. A parchment of 891 kept in the chapter archive of Monza, recalled by the Camminacittà record, shows Sant’Eufemia already then as an important centre of monastic life. The dedication is to the martyr of Chalcedon and is tied to the spread of her cult, which tradition attributes to the bishop of Como Abbondio, present at the council of 451 (see also the basilica of Sant’Eufemia on the Isola Comacina).
The building was renewed in Romanesque forms at the end of the 11th century and enlarged in the 12th. The complex was much larger than what we see: around the church there were a baptistery dedicated to Saint John the Baptist, a cemetery, the houses of the canons of the pieve and a defensive wall, attested at least until the mid-16th century. Under the presbytery, then raised, a three-aisled crypt opened, also called the scurolo of Saint Materno, with an oculus that can still be seen, walled up; that raised floor was lowered at the beginning of the 18th century, after its last mention, in 1709.
Then the church lost importance. The sources do not agree on when the pieve title passed to Santa Maria Nascente, the church in the centre of Erba (see Santa Maria Nascente): Camminacittà ties it to Saint Charles Borromeo’s visit of 1574, the regional record and Wikipedia to 1584, UPEL to a decree of 1596, which also had the crumbling crypt and baptistery demolished. They also differ on the lengthening of the nave up to the bell tower: between the late 16th and early 17th century for Camminacittà, the 17th for the regional record, the 16th for the municipality of Erba, the 18th for UPEL; the only certainty is that in 1709 the tower already stood against the façade.
The more recent interventions are better documented. In 1843, after stones fell, the truncated-pyramid roof of the bell tower was removed and replaced by the present flat one; at the end of the 19th century the capitals of the windows were redone; between the 1920s and 1930s the row of blind arches was added to the façade, a restoration the regional record calls arbitrary; in 1928 the failing vault was replaced by the truss ceiling. In 1983 the restoration of the Crucifix revealed the images on its arms and, from 18 July to 12 August 1994, excavations directed by Sauro Gelichi (University of Pisa) and Isabella Nobili (Museum of Como) brought the baptistery to light. In the Jubilee of 2000, at the wish of Archbishop Carlo Maria Martini, the church was included among the 23 jubilee churches of the archdiocese of Milan. A small chapel near the entrance remembers the 77 people, mostly women and children, killed in the Allied bombing of Erba on 30 September and 1 October 1944.
What to see
The bell tower hides much of the façade, so that it is the first thing one notices. It was built between the 11th and 12th century and stood apart from the church; it also served as a lookout tower for the whole pieve. Below it is of river pebbles with a few inscribed Roman altars, above of squared granite blocks; bands of hanging arches divide it into six stages and the last three open with a single, a double and a triple window, with two much worn lion heads.
The portal is flush with the tower. In the niche above, close to the broken pediment, is the copy of a Romanesque white marble fragment found in 1970 during works on the presbytery, which shows a man with a book between two small trees on which birds perch; the original is inside, under the altar. The most common reading is the Redeemer. The apse, semicircular, is the oldest part: on the outer wall the large paleo-Christian windows, closed later, can be seen, and four pilasters divide the wall into three fields.
The interior has a single nave with a timber truss ceiling. Beside the entrance is set the holy-water stoup in Musso marble with small heads in relief, carved with the date 1212 and the letters R.A.ME.F.FI.: the regional record and Camminacittà expand them as «Reverendus Abbas me fecit fieri», while Wikipedia, the municipality and UPEL read P.A.M.E.F., «Petrus Antonius me fecit». The right-hand chapel is the Virgin’s and is tied to the Parravicini family: above the altar, decorated with a scagliola frontal bearing Saint Bernardino’s monogram, is a late medieval fresco with the Madonna and Child, Saints Bartholomew (patron of the Parravicini) and John the Baptist and two donors. At the sides are two 16th-century canvases, the Annunciation on the right and the Madonna and Child with the young Saint John on the left.
The main work is the large wooden Crucifix, dated to the 16th century by the municipality and to the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries by other sources, with the painted Christ in Giotto’s manner. In the panels at the ends, brought to light by the restoration of 1983, appear the Mater Dolorosa, Saint John, Christ the Redeemer (or the Trinity, according to the sources) and below the chalice collecting the blood. On the high altar is a gilded wooden altarpiece of the late 16th century, in the form of a small temple, with statuettes of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, Saints Peter and Paul and Saint Eufemia, remade after some thefts.
On the churchyard the paving traces the plan of the excavated baptistery: stone cubes surrounded by a band of cobbles.
Practical information
- The church is in piazza Sant’Eufemia, in Incino, next to piazza Vittorio Veneto, where there is parking.
- According to the Camminacittà record (undated) it is generally open; Mass times are on the website of the Sant’Eufemia pastoral community.
- Accessibility, again from Camminacittà: a square paved in stone slabs, a low step in front of the tower and façade that at the main entrance becomes a gently rising ramp; from the pavement one passes where the chains on posts break.
- The name Incino is derived from the Latin Licini forum: Wikipedia attributes it to Cato and to Pliny the Elder, the parish website to Pliny the Younger.
Sources
- Lombardia Beni Culturali, Chiesa di S. Eufemia - complesso (record CO250-00174)
- Camminacittà, Erba, Chiesa di S. Eufemia card (PDF)
- Comune di Erba, Chiesa Sant’Eufemia
- UPEL Italia, Chiesa di Sant’Eufemia, Incino (29/8/2022)
- Comunità pastorale Sant’Eufemia, Chiesa di S. Eufemia
- Wikipedia, entries Chiesa di Sant’Eufemia (Erba) and Incino.
