The Jerusalem of San Vivaldo

They call it the Jerusalem of Tuscany, they knew it as the poor man’s Bible

San Vivaldo has always been a destination for strolling. People go there on Sundays, usually after a tavern lunch or before an afternoon snack. You go there for shade and for the fine air, for the silence and peace that here, everyone is very careful to respect.

Because San Vivaldo is first and foremost a place of faith and pilgrimage.

Its origins date back to the 1300s, when Blessed Vivaldo, a Franciscan tertiary, retired to a hermit life in its woods. According to an ancient 16th-century text, he lived for 20 years inside a tiny cell carved into the hollow of a chestnut tree. Twenty years of renunciation, fasting and hardship.

When he died, the Franciscan brothers built a chapel in his name, and in 1355, where he had died, they built the same church we see today.

In 1500, following the settlement of the Franciscan Friars Minor, construction began on a complex of chapels arranged, on a smaller scale, according to the plan of Jerusalem at the time. Inside each small temple, polychrome terracotta bas-reliefs in the Della Robbia tradition, depicting the scenes of the passion of Christ.

It was thanks to a papal bull of Leo X-which granted indulgences to those who visited it-that the Sacred Mount of San Vivaldo, also known as the Gerusalem of Tuscany, became a pilgrimage destination for all those who could not go to the Holy Land.

The choice of the polychrome terracotta bas-relief was in response to the apostolic mission of the Franciscans, who, like the other mendicant orders, were preaching friars. The need for making God’s word understood pushed them toward a language that would speak to everyone, even the illiterate.

The scenes, the faces, the details of this bible of the poor Are realistic, clear, understandable. The Last Supper is set like a Renaissance dinner table for example; expressions are emphatic, characters recognizable: in the scene of the washing of the feet, Judas the traitor, the last on the left, has a sullen face and clutches the coins of his betrayal in his hand, miserly. The message is concrete and has a strong emotional impact.