Gruppo BISACCIA

The property chosen is a small chapel that contains the whole story of a wealthy family, the pharmacists Bucci, from Bisaccia. Particular is the crypt with the burial of the Bucci family dating back to 1671.

Private chapel until 1827, single nave, stone structure, plastered facade, exposed truss roof (original), terracotta floor (2000s) that allows you to see the tombstones of the ancient family underground burials under a glass.

Unknown

The chapel was erected in the year 1667

Piazza del Carmine - Via Pasquale Stanislao Mancini, 192, 83044 Bisaccia AV

Today the chapel belongs to the Archdiocese of Sant’Angelo dei Lombardi, Conza, Nusco and Bisaccia.

The state of conservation is excellent, recent restorations have safeguarded the crypt below, from 7 July 2021 the wooden statue of the Madonna del Monte del Carmelo was exposed to the public for some time

The church of S. Maria del Carmine, also known as the church of the Vergine del Carmelo, was built in the seventeenth century, precisely in 1667 at the wish of Carmine Bucci, a nobleman very devoted to the Virgin Mary, dedicated to S. Maria del Monte del Carmelo, even if the cult was already in use in the ancient Cathedral. It is a small religious building located in old Bisaccia, after the descent called "Le Forge". The simple religious building closes on one side the small square on which there is also another religious building, known as the church "of the Dead". The stone entrance portal, made by skilled local stonemasons, is simple, with an inscription. The portal is surmounted by a niche containing a majolica depicting the Madonna del Carmine, with a brown dress, white mantle and eight-pointed star, holding two scapulars in her hand. The simple interior, with a rectangular plan, a single nave, without an apse or presbytery. With a single opening overlooking the square, furnished with a wooden pulpit and an altar in polychrome marble. The roof is trussed, original from the seventeenth century. and the internal decorations are quite responsive to the original realization. A public oratory with sacristy is also attached to the chapel. Interesting are the three stone tombstones, on the floor, placed at the end of the family underground burials dating back to 1671, saved by a restoration in the 2000s ca. In the chapel, on the sides of the altar, the statues of Saint Teresa of the Child Jesus and of Saint Teresa of Avila are placed, in a niche there is the effigy of Saint Lucia and on the opposite wall a niche with the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The niche above the altar houses the wooden statue of the Blessed Virgin of Mount Carmel, datable to around the late 1500s and early 1600s. The decoration of the statue is done using the ESTOFATO technique (a technique typical of Spanish art of using pure gold leaves and lacquers of various colors to imitate the effect of precious damask and brocade fabrics) to imitate the brown silk studded with stars of the dress and the morning star on the mantle. The title of Mount Carmel recalls the spiritual heritage of the prophet Elijah, a contemplative man and a staunch defender of Jewish monotheism. In imitation of Elijah, in the twelfth century some hermits retired to Carmel with the intention of devoting themselves to divine worship under the patronage of the Blessed Virgin Mary, mother of God. The Carmelite order began from this hermit community, which promoted the worship of Mary with this title. The Queen of Mount Carmel is the patroness of Carmelites and of those who commit themselves to living the spirituality of Carmel; she is the protector of those who wear the scapular and is the special support of the souls in Purgatory. In the Middle Ages, the first Christian monastic communities settled on Carmel and began a life of contemplation. In the 11th century, the Crusaders found religious in this place, probably of the Maronite rite, who defined themselves as heirs of the disciples of the prophet Elijah and followed the rule of St. Basil. "In about 1154 the French noble Bertoldo retired to the mountain, arrived in Palestine with his cousin Aimerio of Limoges, patriarch of Antioch, and it was decided to reunite the hermits for a cenobitic life". At the beginning of the thirteenth century Giacomo di Vitry reports that they "for example and imitation of the holy and solitary man Elijah, at the source that bears the name of Elijah" lived in a hive of small cells "like bees of the Lord, producing spiritual sweetness". In the middle of the cells they built the community church, which they dedicated to Mary; thus, to distinguish them from the Greek religious of the nearby monastery of Santa Margherita, the hermits were called "friars of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Carmel", today's Carmelites. In this way Carmel definitively acquired its two peculiarities: the reference to the prophet Elijah and the bond with the Holy Virgin. Subsequently, between 1207 and 1209, the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem Alberto di Vercelli wrote the first statutes for the hermits of Mount Carmel, known as "primitive rule" or "formula vitae", conforming to a propositum manifested by the same hermits who intended to give a canonical and ecclesiastical form to the life they led. Towards 1235, the friars had to abandon the East, due to the Saracen invasion, settling mostly in Europe and founding their first convent in Messina, in the locality of Ritiro, in 1238; other convents were also built in Marseilles (also in 1238), in Kent in England (1242), in Pisa (1249), in Paris (1254); the Carmelites thus spread the cult of She who "was given the glory of Lebanon, the splendor of Carmel and of Saron" (Isaiah 35,2). The chapel, under the patronage of the Bucci family, was opened to public worship with a notarial deed of 7 August 1827.