The Nuncio: There are symbols in the basilica but enough talking about mysteries and other fantasies
by GIUSTINO PARISSE
Since his retirement, Monsignor Orlando Antonini , Apostolic Nuncio, has returned to his Villa Sant’Angelo, where he lives in a MAP. As an expert in history and religious architecture, in the interview he clarifies the alleged mysteries that are hidden in the Basilica of Santa Maria di Collemaggio which, variously interpreted, often overlap and risk obscuring the spiritual value of the place in which, over 700 years ago, Pope Celestine V was crowned by Morrone.
Monsignor Antonini, the reopening of the Basilica of Collemaggio after the reconstruction and restoration has once again brought about talk of the so-called “mysteries of Collemaggio”: reading the floor, astral magic, vibrations, esoteric meanings. What is your assessment of these phenomena?
«I recognize that in recent decades Santa Maria di Collemaggio has leapt to attention, perhaps national, gaining much knowledge, thanks precisely to the dissemination of information on these “mysteries”. This is due to the strong return of the religious in this post-modern era, to the rebirth of the sacred, to the awakening of the spiritual with the symbolic knowledge connected to it, in the need for the irrational as a collateral effect of technological advancement. However, it is far preferable that interest and knowledge of this splendid basilica of ours spread based more on its historical and architectural-artistic excellence, on its perceptible Christian symbolisms, and especially on its being a privileged place of forgiveness. Forgiveness received from God and given by us to our neighbor, of the “forgiveness” that Pope John Paul II in 2002 stated should be inherent to the principle of “justice” driving a “politics of forgiveness expressed in social attitudes and even in legal institutions, in which justice itself takes on a more human face”».
In your opinion, are there any symbolic elements wanted by the builders?
«I was the first in L’Aquila to speak of architectural symbolism in 1988, having come across, while examining the architecture of our medieval churches, structural oddities such as the unprecedented unequal width of the side naves and the off-axis of the apses compared to that of the naves in some of them. Since such constructive enigmas are repeated identically in several examples, not only in L’Aquila, but also in its County, also in Abruzzo, in Italy and even in France in Notre-Dame de Paris, one can no longer believe in casual circumstances, or in irregularities resulting from post-seismic reconstructions, as is currently supposed. And if one does not resort to symbolism, as an interpretative key, one cannot unravel the skein even from a technical point of view. In Collemaggio and other churches, however – here’s the point – it is indeed a question of symbolism desired by the builders, but of symbolism of a non-esoteric type, rather of a theological and biblical type. Symbolism perceptible to all and aimed at the commitment and spiritual growth of the faithful. I did not invent those of the churches of L’Aquila, I discovered them to be part of the lexicon of symbols of the Middle Ages: the off-axis apse represents the head of Jesus dying on the cross and the wider nave the side of Jesus crucified torn by the soldier’s spear, from which water and blood flowed, symbols in turn of Baptism and Eucharist, from which the Church was born. I do not deny that other types of symbolism may exist in the structures and decoration of churches, since Christianity, a great producer of symbols, with the growing number of believers found itself, with the problem of building places of worship, entering into a stable relationship, as a large client, with the associations of builders and their relative cultural baggage and construction traditions. Since those elements seemed suitable to favor the life of faith that it wanted to establish, it took some of those symbols, those susceptible to adaptation to its own formative purposes, eliminating what was pagan in them and, if necessary, replacing their contents. It is however possible that, in the erection of the new sacred buildings, the builders on the margin of the intention of the clients may have also made use of hidden esoteric aids. Therefore, great caution is needed in reading them, one can easily mistake fireflies for lanterns and get excited in out of place fantasies, devoid of any documentary and scientific support».
There is also often talk of two-coloured concentric circles, which would be a reference to the Creation, of plays of light and shadow, of the image of the Virgin that appears thanks to the sun’s rays that penetrate from the rose window. What is reliable?
«In fact, on August 15, the feast of the Assumption of Mary, the titular saint of the basilica, and it seems also on the summer solstice, the feast of Saint John the Baptist, the sun’s rays passing through the main rose window are aimed at the large mullioned window in the apse and at the two-tone labyrinth design of the floor. Well, on the mullioned window illuminated by the sun I do not see any Virgin appear – am I refractory to this, a man of the church? – nor do I feel any “vibrations” on the ground, but I only feel an interior harmony that is born from the encounter with God in prayer. Even if the current August 15th corresponded to the 15th-15th century August 15th of the construction of the Gothic window and the rose window on the façade, despite the Gregorian calendar reform of 1582 – which skipped 10 days from the Julian calendar, from October 4th to 15th – the play of light still had a very short life: just a century, because already in the second half of the sixteenth century, if not before, between the solar rays of the rose window and the mullioned window at the back on which they are directed, first the very high gilded wooden high altar was placed as a diaphragm, about which Alferi wrote in 1589, and then around 1669 the baroque transformation of the temple took place, which hid the rose windows until 1970-72, the years of Moretti’s “restoration”. In short, one must seriously ask whether this symbolic play of light was actually intended by the builders».
When speaking of Collemaggio, links between the Templars and Celestine V are evoked, there are tales of immense treasures that are supposedly buried under the basilica, even the Holy Grail and the Ark of the Covenant. Is there any historical truth to all this?
«The authors actually record that Pietro del Morrone was hosted and supported by the Templars when, in 1274, he went to Lyon. Furthermore, in 1294 the Templar prior at the time, Louis of Auvergne , was part of the papal delegation sent by Boniface VIII to block Celestine in Vieste, to prevent him from going to settle in the Holy Land and to bring him back: this was probably done, given the good ties existing with him, to persuade him to accept obeying the successor Pope. However, the fact that the Templars also had their own “mansion” in L’Aquila – whether in San Tommaso next to Santa Maria di Assergi, today del Carmine, as is hypothesized, or in another place, it does not matter – should neither surprise nor spark, here too, out of place fantasies. Before its suppression in 1312, this religious-chivalric order was present everywhere in Europe, similarly, albeit to a lesser extent, to other religious orders: Cistercians, Franciscans, Dominicans and so on. All ecclesiastical superiors therefore had normal and more or less close relationships, institutional or economic, with the Templars. It was the well-known myths and legends that arose between the 18th and 19th centuries about them and their last Grand Master Jacques de Moley – burned at the stake in 1314, together with Goffredo de Charny and other dignitaries – that formed the mysterious aura around them and continue to fuel, today, the mania of imagining that every possible former Templar mansion or commandery, or every character who had dealings with the Templars, including Pietro del Morrone and Collemaggio, must hide who knows what secrets. If all the places that are candidates for former Templar sites in Europe were actually so, thanks to the relationships that this or that historical figure had necessarily woven with those Knights, how many Holy Grails, how many Arks of the Covenant, how many immense treasures should we find? In this sense it was a shame that, having at our disposal Eni – a generous sponsor of the reconstruction of the basilica which cost half of what was initially declared – we did not try to include in the project archaeological excavations in the subsoil of the basilica itself: we could have put an end to what today appear to be little more than fervent imaginations».
However, she judges the reawakening of the sacred in today’s society in a positive way.
«Yes, of course. It is just a shame that this awakening indulges in dubious esotericism and pantheistic movements, such as the New Age with its post-Christian, relativist and neo-gnostic conceptions, in the naive pretense of realizing oneself with one’s own strength alone through “enlightenment” and sometimes in a spirit of aprioristic opposition to the Church. Obviously, by relying on themes dear to modern feeling, such as pacifism, universal brotherhood, ecology, do-it-yourself religion, and by indulging in magic, reincarnation, astrology, communication with the dead, divination, these theories gain an audience in many uninformed post-modern ears. It is a dangerous game for Western civilization itself. If culture foolishly got rid of the immune system that is Christianity, reducing it to any of the many religions that have followed one another in the history of “original knowledge”, it would risk returning to the pre-scientific era, to polytheism and superstition, with the fine result of being annihilated precisely at this historical moment of encounter or clash of civilizations. And in our society, great cultural and social values would be nullified, of which only Christianity has been the bearer: the subjective rights of every man, to be the image of God; the secularity of the state thanks to the evangelical distinction between Caesar and God, in Matthew 21,21, therefore the distinction between politics and religion; the equal dignity of man and woman. All these values, which were not immediately assimilated due to their revolutionary charge, were gradually understood over the centuries, also through hard experiences and demotions. But faith had inoculated them into our DNA.
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